


Lagleita

by cognomen



Series: Fate Cycle [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vikings, Blood and Gore, Complete, F/M, Fatebreaker!Hannibal, Horse Culture, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Sexual Slavery, Seer!Will, Violence, alternate universe - warlords, minor magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-03-18 01:01:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 37
Words: 61,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3550235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Will wakes from his dreamless sleep, sprawled comfortably over the expanse of the bed and furs. It is luxurious; he can wake as slow as he likes, come up from the quiet depths in the late-summer warmth. </i>
</p><p>  <i>Today his scar itches, and Will turns over, scratching his short nails idly over it and feeling them catch on the raised skin until it eases its itching. This blissful accomplishment past, he becomes aware that the bed is empty except for him. </i></p><p>  <i>When he opens his eyes, the sun is streaming in from the window over the bed, suggesting it is late enough that Hannibal is out making his rounds. He had taken to letting Will sleep in after his injury, and Will had discovered  deep pleasure in the freedom and self possession of it. </i></p><p> A year after the events in <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1977054/chapters/4279086">Lagbrotna</a>, the peaceful routine that their town has just begun to settle into is shattered again, and this time things seem to be changing for the worse.  More dire seems to be the lack of warning... In which minor magic is real, Hannibal struggles to attain his goal, and Will does his best to keep things on the right track.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Will wakes from his dreamless sleep, sprawled comfortably over the expanse of the bed and furs. It is luxurious; he can wake as slow as he likes, come up from the quiet depths in the late-summer warmth. 

Today his scar itches, and Will turns over, scratching his short nails idly over it and feeling them catch on the raised skin until it eases its itching. This blissful accomplishment past, he becomes aware that the bed is empty except for him. 

When he opens his eyes, the sun is streaming in from the window over the bed, suggesting it is late enough that Hannibal is out making his rounds. He had taken to letting Will sleep in after his injury, and Will had discovered deep pleasure in the freedom and self possession of it. 

A noise rouses him further, and Will surrenders his notion of sleeping more - perhaps until Hannibal returned.

A heavy sound in the main room of the longhouse. Will drags himself out of bed and goes to see what the commotion is, finding the space strangely filled.

Four hooves stand near the unlit fire pit, throwing long-legged shadows through the house. The animal stands in silhouette in the doorway, morning sun streaming around it to render the figure black, a living shadow with a long, thick neck and a broad nose. 

It is the long ears that ruin the mystery of this particular shadow.

"Rata," Will scolds, and she lifts her head from raiding the apple basket. "Mules stay _outside_ "

Her jaw works, and mashed apple falls to the floor, unimpressed with Will's half-dressed ire. He steps toward her, making a shooing motion with his hands until she takes his meaning and begins to back out through the open door. 

She hesitates, her dark mischievous eyes gauging distance, and slowly she extends her neck to take another apple, ignoring Will's scolding noises. She surrenders the last steps in a hurry with her stolen prize.

'Rata' was right, though Will wonders if he had cursed himself with the name - it had only been after he'd given it to her that she'd learned to work open the door of her stall and go wandering. Usually, in search of Will, but apples suited her needs just the same, so he knows her loyalty is tempered by practicality, at least.

Will glances out after her and finds that she has not gone far - but that she has not, at least, let her stallmate out. At the risk of losing more apples, he lets her be. She will not wander far when she knows Will is near, a trait he has become fond of in her.

Will stokes up a small fire - not enough to heat the house to sweltering. The summer days are warm and the nights only cool - just barely comfortable enough to sleep. Will is grateful for the temperate weather, for the easy, steady rhythm of life in Ró. He readies the tea, throwing a handful of dried flowers into the iron kettle to steep.

Then he glances at the closed door of his old room, the bar swung tightly closed. The slave makes him nervous, though he is polite in his way. His eyes retain defiance, his attitude is disingenuous. At least, it seems as such to Will, who feels Matthias' eyes settle on him too often and with too much interest.

Perhaps it is just a gap in understanding. Will pours two cups of tea and leaves one on the table, carrying the other to Matthias' door. He taps lightly to announce his presence, and then swings the door open. Inside, the former Imperial sits on the edge of the bed like a crouched animal, and watches Will enter his space intently, his attention seemingly locked with Will's luminous blue gaze.

"Good morning," Will says, in the soft-feeling imperial language. 

"Good morning, Will," Matthias answers in Ardik - he has learned much faster than Will, submerged in it and driven by necessity.

He stands up, and the chains rattle at his wrists, the sound a familiar one to Will. He takes the cup when Will offers it and drinks without breaking eye contact.

The weight and interest of Matthias' stare - the way the whole of his lean body seems to line up with the motion, lizardlike - all unnerve Will to the point of wanting to escape.

"Would you care for breakfast?" Will asks, hoping that time and kindness, in what small ways he can offer it, will continue to ease the man's interest in him.

Will can hope, anyway, though he does not truly understand the source of it in Matthias specifically. The other Imperials had been fascinated at first by his unusual eyes, but did not seem willing to ascribe anything but that to his abilities. Most flat out refuse to believe, and Will is content not to correct them.

After all, his sight is his to use or not at his own discretion now. Hannibal makes no demands of Will's gift, as he ever had, instead asking respectfully. 

"No sir," Matthias says, smiling a little as Will settles down at the table to drink his own tea. "I'm not hungry yet."

Will allows that, but does not want to be stared at for the duration of his own meal.

"Rata has gone out wandering," he says. "Now would be a good time to see to the stalls and feed the animals."

Matthias acknowledges with a nod, taking a moment to finish his tea as he knows he is allowed, before going out to see to his chores. Will breathes easier when he knows he is no longer being watched. He eats his own breakfast - bread, honey and milk, in silence, grateful to feel himself unwind again after enduring so much singular attention. He wonders where Hannibal is, and supposes he will find out. 

In the year he's spent in Ró, things have changed slowly, comfortably as Will grew into the new, unexpected place he finds himself in. It feels strange to consider the expanse of time behind him, how different things are now after years of the same.

He finishes his tea and thinks of how his fate, once broken, has come to be reforged. 

Gathering his things for the day - a wax tablet, a stylus, Will makes ready to go searching. Hannibal's leather armor - a heavy burden he'd been putting off for nearly a week - is in need of repair. He gathers it up, slinging it over his arms and heading out into the heat of summer.

Ró has grown green and bright again, after the long winter. Will breathes in the warm air and looks up at the expanse of uninterrupted blue sky before the weight of the armor spurs him on. 

A glance into the stables shows him Matthias working - he has shed his simple tunic to leave himself bare-chested in the heat, keeping cool. He has a soldier's body, hard and lean and well-muscled in a way that Will envies. 

He has seen, too, how the eyes of some of the women watch him and wonders how much of his bareness is truly practicality, and how much is vanity.

Will hoists his burden and continues on to the seamstresses, the three sisters who had so struggled to clothe the new influx of slaves, and yet who had nothing to say by way of complaint for the four strong and usually willing slaves they had been given. 

"Will," the voice interrupts his thoughts and his determined trek, and Will hefts up the armload of leather that is nearly dragging on the ground before turning.

Fredrik trots to catch up, clad in a leather apron and an eye-catching circular bruise at the junction of his chin and neck, where the skin is soft and vulnerable. Will stares too long, trying to identify it before it hits him.

Fredrik lifts a hand in embarrassment and lays his open palm over the love mark. Will smiles, shaking his head to allay Fredrik's worry - Will is hardly one to judge.

"Will," Fredrik repeats, glancing at Will's burden and then falling into step. His tone is urgent, his voice low in conspiracy. "Three of the slaves vanished in the night. Have you seen Hannibal?"

Will winces - the treatment of the Imperials was mostly fair, but this escape would be punished harshly. Will can hardly blame them - what man did not long for his freedom, when he had been born to it - but he understands the need for discipline.

"He was already out when I woke," Will answers, hoisting the ringed shirt higher as it threatens to slip out of his grasp. "Which three was it?"

"The two brothers set to watching sheep and a comrade of theirs who had no set task," Fredrik explains, calling the individuals to Will's memory by features if not name. He places the third as well - a leggy youth he had seen, Randulf - often idle and angry - resentful of captivity and unwilling to see the Ardik as anything but savages. Will is certain that this is the key to the foolish attempt. 

"They won't get far unless they have already left the valley. The pass is under watch, but-" Fredrik sighs.

Will passes him the heavy armor. "I can help. But you have to go easy on them when they're found."

"If _I_ find them," Fredrik says. He cannot make a promise on Hannibal's behalf, and Hannibal would not have the luxury of being lenient. 

Will stops walking and takes a deep breath of warm, fragrant air. He can smell bread baking and leather drying in the sun, can feel the heat of the day on the crown of his head and the nape of his neck. He closes his eyes and reaches down into the sight, rifling the strands. As ever, his fingers seem to slip from Hannibal's fate. Instead he seeks those that intersect it - and his own, sifting through what feels like dozens of fleeting encounters. Will feels it takes nearly an unbearable amount of time to sift back through them until he catches the right line.

Will comes back with a start, plunged into thoughts patterned so differently he nearly reels from it. He has never felt anything quite like them, animalistic and darkly angry. He reaches back in, determined to get hold of something useful, finding the thoughts red and raw, a vision of mountains, the feeling of slippery grass beneath his palms. He can smell blood, and at the corner of his vision is a wreckage that might be a body.

"South," he gasps, into the warm welcome of summer air, "they have not left the valley."

There is something strange and wrong about the vision, something Will cannot wholly grasp or explain, nor does he feel he has the time to. "I think he's looking for the mountain pass out. Go quickly."

Something in his demeanor conveys the urgency. Fredrik passes him back the heavy armor in need of mending, grateful for Will's help.

He takes it, numb and uncertain.

-


	2. dreyrugr

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will leaves the armor with the mailleworker, anxious that Hannibal does not have it after his unsettling vision. He isn't sure what to make of the animalistic thoughts, of the disturbing danger that had seemed to hang over the scene. Perhaps his vision had been wrong - distorted somehow when he had hastily reached for an unfamiliar fate line?
> 
> It has never happened before. Will's search for Hannibal takes on a new tone - he wants to be with Hannibal, to be reassured by the presence of his confidence. 
> 
> He takes a deep breath and tries to think logically. Where was Hannibal most likely to be? Could Will reach him before word of Randulf's escape?

Will leaves the armor with the mailleworker, anxious that Hannibal does not have it after his unsettling vision. He isn't sure what to make of the animalistic thoughts, of the disturbing danger that had seemed to hang over the scene. Perhaps his vision had been wrong - distorted somehow when he had hastily reached for an unfamiliar fate line?

It has never happened before. Will's search for Hannibal takes on a new tone - he wants to be with Hannibal, to be reassured by the presence of his confidence. 

He takes a deep breath and tries to think logically. Where was Hannibal most likely to be? Could Will reach him before word of Randulf's escape?

He wishes he had taken Rata. If Hannibal is down surveying the crops, Will has no chance of getting to him first. He heads for the back of town, hoping that Hannibal is helping in the reconstruction of the back entrance into Ró, the caves they had sealed when General Iohannes had discovered them. Will heads for the far end of town, for the strange doorway that had so haunted his dreams.

A team works to clear the debris and rocks from the cleared tunnel, though now they are all at rest, eating.

Brunn - with his dashing eyepatch covering his missing eye - sees Will first and lifts a hand to greet him. Ymir looks up too, and smiles, raising his tankard in greeting. 

"Seer!" Ymir shouts, "Awake at last. A rough evening or a _long_ one?"

Ymir stretches the words into suggestive tones, offering a lewd grin. Will wonders if he and Brunn still share bets on the subject. Surely there were newer points of interest for their wagers.

Will smiles and confirms neither speculation, hoping to discourage any ideas of betting that remain.

"How is progress on the tunnel?" he asks, genuinely curious He had been present when the work started, when they had brought up the bodies - some headless - of the trapped raiding party. One had been draped in the flag he’d carried, a black stag. Will had disliked seeing it come out of the black shadows of the doorway into the light of day, while he was awake.

"We should be through again by the next feast day," Brunn tells him, and Will doubts it is a brag.

"Has Hannibal been here today?" Will asks, remembering his purpose in coming before he can be lured into the comforting chatter of the Ardik warriors. 

"First thing this morning," Ymir answers amiably, "but he figured we had enough hands."

Will supposes they do. The Ardik have been working hard to restore Ró to how it had been.

"If he returns," Will says, supposing he must keep looking, "let him know I'm seeking him?"

Brunn nods. The pair has grown used to Will and his gift, enough so that neither suggests its use in such a circumstance. Hannibal's tribe - Lagbrotna's tribe - has welcomed him in as one of theirs, respecting his gift of freedom. 

Will turns to make the long trek back to the longhouse, to fetch Rata. The sense of urgency descends on him again, suddenly seizing hold in his belly for no reason he can discern, and his steps grow quicker of their own accord. He makes it home at a run, breathless, and ducks between the two houses where the alley has been closed off into a stable.

Matthias looks up from the end of his chore, startled by Will's rushing footsteps. Confusion forms slowly on his features, but Will brushes by him without acknowledgement. 

He does not take the time to saddle Rata, though his seat is not as confident as Hannibal's without the saddle. He climbs the low yard fence to get his leg over Rata's back, keeping hold of the rope attached to her halter. 

Her long, expressive ears flick back toward Will, reading the anxiety in his mood. He isn't quite sure how, but he knows that when he reaches out for the future, what comes to hand will be dire. 

Will closes his eyes, about to reach, but shouting and thundering hoofbeats stop him.

Fredrik comes up at a gallop on his gray, horse lathered. "Will, we need you, you-"

He pulls his horse around sharply and Will kicks Rata into action, feeling her beginning to shift under him before he has even completed the motion.

"You should see this," Fredrik continues in a lower tone - as if he is sorry to bring such a burden to Will.

"Lead me," Will affirms, and does his best to keep his seat when Rata gallops to keep up with Fredrik's horse. They ride out the front gates of the city, scattering a grazing herd of sheep as Fredrik takes a sharp turn to lead them south, as Will had indicated.

They race past the fields, and Will is surprised how short the journey seems to be. He can see two other figures on horses standing, looking down at something in the long grass. One of them is Freda, her long red curls bound back from her face.

Fredrik draws up just a little short, and Will can see suddenly that the grass here is wet and held flat with blood. His stomach tries to plunge into his shoes.

Neither Will nor these fields - this one in particular - are strangers to blood. This place went untilled and undisturbed. It is the grave where the Imperials had buried their lost brothers, and over which had burned the pyres of the lost Ardik. No one came here but to make peace or communion with the dead.

Rata snorts. The smell of blood no longer worries her and she carries Will closer without regard for his trepidation. 

"We found them here, but there's no sign of Randulf, or what has done this to them," Fredrik explains.

"Hell of a wolf," Freda observes, "to go past all those sheep and hunt the men guarding them."

Will thinks there are two bodies - torn in a way that does not suggest warfare. His stomach churns and heaves. The slaves are rent open from neck to groin, insides reduced to a filthy scatter in the earth surrounding, mixed with dirt turned to mud only by virtue of blood spilt.

"Did it - _eat_ them?" Will asks, pushing the back of his hand against his mouth when the smell reaches up to him.

"Parts of them," Freda says, and then she rolls her shoulders in a protracted shrug. "We think, anyway. It's not easy to tell if anything is missing, exactly."

Will shakes his head. He turns Rata away, moving to get some space before the sight and smell overpowers his stomach. He closes his eyes and pulls in deep breaths of warm air, enough to clear his lungs of the heavy smells of blood and death. 

"Was it an animal?" he asks.

"None I'd want to see," Fredrik answers, his tone low. "It bested two full grown men - possibly three."

Will does not want to meet it either, but he expects it will strike again. He opens his eyes again, and it seems strange that all there is to greet him is bright blue sky and the grass, grown long and waving in the breeze.

"Is there any sign of Randulf?" Will asks - he is fairly certain that the two bodies are the shepherds’.

"No. There's nothing - perhaps it dragged him off, or maybe it was just coincidence. They may have never seen him," Fredrik shifts uncomfortably on his horse. "We need Hannibal."

Will nods. 

"I'll try to find him," Will says. "He's - well, it seems most likely he's out in the fields."

Fredrik shakes his head. They must have already checked. Will had been about to reach out back in Ró, but something makes him hesitate now. Things are changing again - the quiet life will pass behind them and Hannibal's gift will guide them back into danger.

Will allows that they already must be, that the danger would exist in their world even without Lagbrotna's gift. Ultimately he is glad to have it, though it is easy to feel it more like a chain around their necks than a rope extended to pull them up.

He reaches out along the line of his own fate, without bothering to reach directly for Hannibal's, but he rushes it and in his haste, reaches a hair too far.

His hold falls onto Hannibal's fate and stays, solid without slipping from his grip.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- dreyrugr, blood-stained  
> 


	3. Illrhundr

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal is pervaded - nearly overcome by his sense of wrongness. It comes on suddenly, overtaking his pleasure at a chance to briefly escape responsibility in favor of a pet project. There is a certain guilt in the activity, in sneaking off unfound and unannounced to be by himself with the horses.
> 
> There is warm summer sun on his back as he works the colt. He is a leggy thing, jubilant and energetic in an endearing way, with a high stepping grace that he had gotten from his mother. His color is a clear inheritance from his father, a deep red bay with dark points, dark ears, a dark muzzle.

Hannibal is pervaded - nearly overcome by his sense of wrongness. It comes on suddenly, overtaking his pleasure at a chance to briefly escape responsibility in favor of a pet project. There is a certain guilt in the activity, in sneaking off unfound and unannounced to be by himself with the horses.

There is warm summer sun on his back as he works the colt. He is a leggy thing, jubilant and energetic in an endearing way, with a high stepping grace that he had gotten from his mother. His color is a clear inheritance from his father, a deep red bay with dark points, dark ears, a dark muzzle.

They have started groundwork only, moving gently through exercises in trust. The colt is years off from riding, and Hannibal will have to settle himself with lesser animals in the interim, until the colt grows into his own limbs. Now, it moves obediently in circles at the end of the lunge line, flightiness eased from him by comfort with the work. Hannibal is proud of the animal, of the prospect it represents.

In his heart, he misses Kanin in an unexpected and demanding way. He finds himself dissatisfied with every mount presented since, unable to bond, intolerant of their real and imagined vices. The greatest of these, of course, was that none of the animals he had tried was Kanin. 

When the feeling overtakes him, Hannibal stops turning suddenly, and the colt comes to a halt at the end of the line. Thinking that the lesson is over, he approaches Hannibal with his ears forward and head high, seeking the usual treat he is rewarded with. He is nearly as tall as Hannibal now, and will be a handsome, respectable height when he has finished growing. 

Hannibal rewards the horse automatically, pulling an apple from a pouch at his hip and offering it while he tries to 'listen' to the source of unease inside him. It is not the call of his gift.

He has not felt that sensation in some time, the heavy hand - a solid presence that seemed to wrap itself up in his chest - tugging him in a direction until he complied. He is suddenly more acutely aware of its absence, feeling a wrongness in how long it had been.

The worry had been waking in him slowly, crawling up beneath the day-to-day functions and endless responsibilities that command of his people seemed to require. He had found it easy to ignore or discard. Now all of the delayed sensation compacts.

Hannibal releases the chewing colt from the lunge line, giving him a gentle pat over his broad nose and looking back toward Ró. It is only gut instinct, but he wants to go back and be certain everything is well.

He wants, suddenly and with perfect clarity, to see Will and know he is well. Hannibal indulges himself, freeing the colt to rejoin the herd. A whistle does not quite draw up his new mount, but the ugly chestnut head lifts from the tall grass. Hannibal repeats the noise, displaying a second apple for the horse to see.

The gelding steps closer, revealing its spotted hide and ungainly proportions. The thin, short tail flicks idly against its flank and he extends his open mouth eagerly for the apple.

"Illrhundr," Hannibal sighs. The name suits the animal, the first one far enough from Kanin in every aspect that Hannibal cannot possibly compare them. "Carry me back to the village. And no tricks."

Illrhundr tosses his head as if to indicate that he makes no promises, but takes the apple and allows Hannibal to swing himself up.

-

Will comes back to himself only slowly; his submersion had been dangerously deep. It is the sensation of suffocation that brings him up again, coughing and snarling, clawing the air as if to yank it into his lungs. His hands tangle unexpectedly in fabric. 

"Will," the voice is familiar, turning sharp. "Will, come out of it!"

Air comes into his lungs and Will rouses himself fully. He is on the ground with Fredrik crouched over him and Rata peering curiously down on his other side. He untangles his hands from Fredrik's shirt, confused for just an instant about who he is and how he had gotten here. His last memory was in the horse fields with Illrhundr.

_No,_ that was wrong. Will _had_ been here, with Fredrik and Freda. 

Fredrik pushes Rata's muzzle away from Will's face, laying a cool hand over Will's forehead. The remains of the confusion fades quickly, and Will sits up, reaching up to ease his fingers over Rata's cheek, soothing himself with the warmth.

"I've never seen you do that before," Fredrik says, half a question. Even Freda is hovering nearby, though she hasn't dismounted, watching attentively while feigning impatience. 

Will swallows. "Do what before?"

"You fell off your horse," Fredrik observes .

Will chuckles bitterly. "Surely you've seen me fall off my horse before."

Will weathers his exasperated expression, knowing he has dodged a question asked out of concern. He pulls himself to his feet with Fredrik's help, taking stock of his injuries. He feels sore, and like the fall had knocked the wind out of him. Otherwise, he feels unharmed.

"I'm alright," he assures Fredrik. "I dropped in deeper than I expected."

"What does that mean?" Freda raises her voice to ask, curious in spite of her casual expression.

"It means that for a moment, I lost myself in the future," Will admits. He isn't sure what compels him to continue in a way that is carefully misleading. "When I reach into my own future, I sometimes forget that I exist in the past."

It's difficult to explain, even when Will can think about it clearly. He takes a deep breath into his sore lungs. "I'm fine now. Hannibal is coming."

Will wants to see him very badly. To know he is whole and well, to see he is still confident. He cannot have lost his power; Will is unwilling to believe it. He must just - just not _need_ it right now.

He tries not to think that Hannibal should already be here, that if there was a fate in need of breaking surely it was the two lying mangled in the grass just here. Hannibal should have been called far sooner to something so dire and so close to his home.

The sound of galloping hooves interrupts his thoughts, and Will pulls himself laboriously back up onto Rata's back. He has to hop twice, and if she were a less patient animal Will would not manage at all.

Hannibal arrives with a dire expression on his face, riding Illrhundr as he had seen. The horse, ugly as it is, is the longest lasting of his replacements for Kanin.

"What is it?" Hannibal demands, seeing their serious expressions.

"You'd better just see," Fredrik mutters. 

Hannibal moves around them, and has a long look at the bodies. Will knows him well enough to read the subtle change on his features. He processes the scene and then - reluctantly, Will thinks - he seems to come to a conclusion. A recognition, before it subsides into an expression of resigned conviction.

"What is the situation as you understand it?" he asks Fredrik, his eyes lingering briefly on the love-mark on Fredrik's neck.

Freda is the one who answers. "They didn't report in after dawn where they usually do, and Beornr found the sheep wandering in the corn crops."

"Our first search didn't turn them up; nor Randulf, when he came to be missing too."

Hannibal looks down at the bodies again, then up at the southern mountain range. His eyes reveal how far away his thoughts are.

"Has there been any sign of Randulf's body?" Hannibal drives to the heart of the account quickly, having evidence enough for the rest of the pieces to fall into place.

"No," Will says. "But when I reached, I sensed him - alive, I think. Here. Something was wrong with him."

"Very wrong," Hannibal agrees. "Freda, go and fetch Ymir and Brunn. We'll need your skills as a huntress."

"A _huntress_?" she asks, and there is pride bordering on insult in her voice.

"Yes," Hannibal says firmly. "We are hunting."

"It is an animal then?" Fredrik asks.

Hannibal draws a breath, shifting his seat so that Illrhundr makes a sidling motion.

"Something akin," he says. "But it is not as simple as a wolf or a cat."

Will had worried as much, with the condition of the bodies. Hannibal continues to deliver his orders, instructing the remaining warrior to see to the remains in the Imperial fashion - they will be buried instead of burned at pyre, according to their tradition. It was a kindness that Hannibal insisted on, indicating a respect for the Imperials as adversaries.

Will reaches back to try and find what had truly unsettled him. There had been an anger to the thoughts, a red rage and an animal drive to kill. As fierce and wild as it had been, there was also a familiar logic and structure to the thoughts.

"Will," Hannibal calls, addressing him from someway back toward the village. He has stopped his horse, waiting. "Come and arm yourself."

Will encourages Rata into a trot to catch up, pleased in a nervous way that Hannibal no longer tries to isolate him totally from danger. He wonders how much of _this_ threat he wants to face. Certainly, he does not want to face it without a weapon.

"Hannibal," he asks, drawing up alongside him as they ride for Ró. The difference in their mounts' heights puts them nearly on an even level. It still feels unusual, and Will spares a thought again to wonder at the curious choice of such an ill-endowed animal.

"Hannibal, what is it?" Will asks, and he _thinks_ he knows, but he wants to hear it from Hannibal.

"In the Imperium," Hannibal begins, and then hesitates. "Before they were so large as they are now, they would raid against the Helenites."

The name is not familiar to Will. He waits. 

"They found them a surprising adversary, in spite of the value of art to their culture. There are a number of those people who remember the old ways," Hannibal explains. "And as with all things Helenic, when the two cultures made peace, the Imperials became enamored of it."

"Of what?" Will asks.

"A moon-curse from the Helenic goddess, Will," Hannibal says. "A gift - like yours or my own, only this one is earned."

Will does not like the sound of this, not in conjunction with the thoughts he had tasted and the destruction he has witnessed.

"He has earned his gift, become Lycaon," Hannibal continues, using a word that sounds like it belongs to the softer Imperial tongue. "He has consumed human flesh and become Other. Wolf, in a man's shape."

"Randulf?" Will asks. Hannibal nods, and they swing down from their horses outside the longhouse. 

Matthias peers out and then bows respectfully, coming to take their mounts.

"Don't put them up," Hannibal says, "but let them drink as much as they'd like."

"Yes, Lagbrotna," Matthias spares them both a curious glance before he leads their mounts away to the trough.

"You said - he _ate_ them?" Will asks.

"Yes."

"And that's what transformed him?"

"Yes," Hannibal steps inside, recovering his longsword, his bow and quiver.

"Hannibal," Will says, "What about _you_?"

He stops, turning toward Will to wait for a clearer question.

"You," Will starts, struggling with the word. " _ate_ Iohannes' heart. Human flesh. Will you become - one of these things?"

Hannibal smiles slowly, pleased with Will's cleverness. He stops his search, approaching Will slowly, touching him fondly - soft fingers over his cheek, beneath his chin. His approval is gentle and warm, and Will finds genuine relief in the contact. He leans into the embrace.

"Ardik are already wolves," Hannibal suggests, and then his tone slides low, he pushes his mouth near to Will's ear, suggestive. "In bed, at least."

Will chuckles in spite of himself, despite all the tension. He rests his forehead against Hannibal's chest and feels that he is solid, confident and strong, and Will's faith is restored. He can have confidence and strength too, knowing that Hannibal does.

"Some wolf," Will says, "begging like a dog."

Hannibal laughs then, and they part - there is still a matter of much seriousness at hand. Will retrieves his knife, and feeling it inadequate, the bow he has been learning. Will is not a good shot, but he does not _always_ miss. He feels safer to have it, knowing the others will also be armed.

"We _can_ kill it, right?" Will asks.

Hannibal is rifling through the chest in their room, pushing clothes around. The wolf-eared cloak lays limp and well used, unneeded over one edge of the chest.

"He has a gift," Hannibal answers distractedly, "but he is not a god. Just as you or I, a Lycaon can be killed."

The news is welcome, even if Will does not expect it to be _easy_. Hannibal's searching continues. A flame comes to light in Will's thoughts.

"Hannibal, I took your armor for repairs," Will confesses. "I'm sorry." 

Hannibal drops the clothes back into the chest, chuckling. "For a man who can see the future, your timing is miserable."

It is a gentle joke, an acceptance of Will's apology and an absolution from blame.

"I shall have to go without it," Hannibal allows, and Will feels worry creep in again.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Illrhundr means, literally, 'ugly dog'. Poor horse!  
> -The Lycaon mythology did have a place in Greek culture, though it's unlikely to have originated there - it's a very ancient idea, that of men who are mostly animal.   
> -Helenites are, in this, Greeks. They're certainly not the Imperium as far as organization and militarization, rather a loose collection of city-states that manages mostly go get along with Imperials, via trade of culture and crops.


	4. Lycaon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The foot of the southern mountains are heavily wooded with the tall, sturdy pines that flourish in the north. They are recovering from their thinned edges, where the Imperials had cut trees to build siege machines. Saplings spring up around the severed stumps; and beyond, in a stark marching line, the whole trees loom tall.
> 
> "There's a certain valor in hunting wolves in the woods at night," Brunn observes, on Will's left and keeping his tone low.
> 
> "Only one wolf," Ymir corrects, and Brunn turns his remaining eye toward his partner, showing his disbelief clearly.
> 
> "It is never _only_ a wolf," he argues.

The foot of the southern mountains are heavily wooded with the tall, sturdy pines that flourish in the north. They are recovering from their thinned edges, where the Imperials had cut trees to build siege machines. Saplings spring up around the severed stumps; and beyond, in a stark marching line, the whole trees loom tall.

"There's a certain valor in hunting wolves in the woods at night," Brunn observes, on Will's left and keeping his tone low.

"Only one wolf," Ymir corrects, and Brunn turns his remaining eye toward his partner, showing his disbelief clearly.

"It is never _only_ a wolf," he argues.

"And this one will not take any sheep," Ymir agrees. 

They wait, staying off of the ground that Freda is searching for tracks. Will does not like how dark the spaces between the trees seem, how heavy. A man cannot hide like an animal does, however; they are not made for it, even gifted by the gods themselves.

Behind the trees, there is only the faintest ridge of red over the mountains where the sun has set. Purple sky hangs heavy over them with its chain of stars shining brightly.

It is a night for fires and stories, for mead and milk and to sing warrior songs. Instead, he watches the small, pale shadow of Freda move low over the ground as a tracking hound might. Will does not know what signs she may find - footprints? Paw prints? He cannot guess, and he doesn't want to ask. Instead, he tries to sit still, now saddled on Rata. She grazes unconcernedly at the fresh grass between the stumps.

Will wishes he had her capacity for calm. His anxiety is slowly climbing, though he knows he is not in any immediate danger, it is easy to sense it coming. He does not even know truly what it is they face. The image of the torn, barely recognizable bodies comes back to him, seeming to hover behind his eyelids until he no longer wants to close them.

Hannibal and Fredrik have gone to scout along either edge of the treeline, for any signs the creature might have returns along a different route. Will misses their presence and turns to watch the direction Hannibal has gone.

Relief eases over him when he catches sight of the pale, spotted hide of Illrhundr in the low light, and only moments later the sound of trotting hooves reaches him. 

"Any sign?" Will calls, anxious.

Hannibal draws up next to him, shaking his head. Well, it was too much to ask that they might catch it - Randulf - on open ground.

Freda's sharp whistle catches the group's attention, and Will looks over to see her holding one hand up victoriously. She had found the trail, under the eaves of the tall trees overhead. Ymir and Brunn head toward her, but Hannibal catches Will's arm to hold him back.

"Stay near me," Hannibal says. "Resist the urge to use your gift."

In this instance, Will does not resent his protectiveness. He keeps Rata close to Illrhundr as they step beneath the eaves of the woods into the darkness beneath, following Freda.

"Where's Fredrik?" she demands, looking hard at Hannibal as if he were immediately responsible for her missing mate. 

"He followed the western edge," Hannibal tells her, "he hasn't returned yet."

She glances westward, and Will thinks for a moment that she looks concerned. Fredrik is a capable warrior, but to leave him alone - well it wasn't Will's decision.

"I suppose he's capable of following four mounted and reckless hunters as they go crashing through the woods," Freda allows. 

She leads the way, picking her entrance into the forest by some track that Will can't perceive. Beneath the eaves of the trees, the darkness grows thick and tangible. It feels like a heavy cloak settling over Will's shoulders and eyes. Thought the summer air is warm around them, Will feels cool, uncertain. There is a nervous sweat in the small of his back.

Around them there are only the sounds of the hunting party; a gentle jingling of tack, the muffled sounds of horse hooves on the thick leaf litter. It sounds like a cacophony in the otherwise dead air - no night birds sound, no insects. They move in a void, and it feels as if all else but the close-pressed tree trunks have ceased to exist. 

Will keeps his eyes open, scanning in every direction until his neck grows sore. He can hear Ymir and Brunn behind him, uncharacteristically quiet except for the sounds of their motion. Will can almost feel the aura of fear around them. It seems like a singing current in the air around them, electric.

Whatever hunters live in the woods, natural or otherwise, must surely smell it. Will does not know how they hope to find Randulf.

"We're turning westward," Hannibal observes, though how he knows Will isn't sure. 

"As best I can tell," Freda snaps, "that's the way _it_ went."

"Are you unsure?" Hannibal's tone is gentle in the face of her frustration. 

"Are _you_?" she demands, wheeling her horse around to challenge him suddenly.

The party draws to a halt at the confrontation. Freda looks worried, angry.

"Why am I trying to track half-formed footprints in the _dark_ ," she hisses, "When the great Lagbrotna is in line behind me?"

Hannibal waits for her to finish spitting her venom, sitting proudly. Will finds the picture diminished, knowing that he does not feel as confident as he looks. He sits shorter on his ugly horse, and Will knows about the loss of his gift. It seems the others have begun to suspect, to notice something different. Of course, those with the least reason for faith would question it first. 

"This is not a matter of fate," Hannibal suggests blandly. "Nor one that might interest the gods. There is nothing changed in the world by this, Freda."

"There are two men dead," she growls.

"They are not the only men who died today. Some pass to age, some to accident."

Will cannot fathom the need to argue about this here, in the woods. He shifts nervously, watching the darkness that seems now to press in on him. 

"But by the death of these men," Hannibal continues explaining, though his tone lacks the full degree of confidence it usually has. Will hopes he is the only one to hear it.

"Ardia does not collapse. The Imperial empire does not spread to another corner of the world. Freda, mortality is by design. Not every loss is worth my attention as Lagbrotna, even if I give it as the chief of Ró."

She looks angry, and Will realizes that she is more frightened than he has ever seen her to be.

"Can't we light a torch?" Will asks, voice small in the tense darkness. Both sets of eyes turn toward him, and Will shifts. Rata eases closer to Illrhundr.

"Well, it can't call more attention to us than shouting at each other," Hannibal allows.

Ymir hands a pair of tar-soaked torches up to Will, who gratefully passes first one, then the other to Hannibal. When they are lit, Freda takes one and Will is about to hand the other back to Ymir when some green spark in the depths of the darkness catches his attention. 

He freezes, holding the torch higher.

Two green spots shine luminous just beyond the edges of the torchlight, crouched low to the ground. For a long moment, they do not move, aimed with a malevolence toward the party. Will has seen cat's eyes shine so, or owls - a predator's eyes and stillness.

Will catches his breath and holds it, lifting the torch higher. He is aware that the others have gone quiet but cannot form the warning words, so deep and sudden does an old primal terror seize him. It is the memory of his hunted ancestors, held in his blood or his soul itself that makes Will freeze still. 

The urge to close his eyes and pray to any god - to _every_ god - that it would not _see_ him, would not smell him. That it would turn around and go away. It becomes, for those few seconds, the strongest desire in his being to be unnoticed.

"Will?" Hannibal asks, softly. 

He realizes his eyes are closed, as if to ward off evil by denying its existence. When he opens them again, the two green spots are receding, sinking into darkness away from the light. Will knows if they lose it, it will come back around - it will _hurt_ someone when it returns, and surprise will be its ally.

Kicking Rata hard he chases and she springs forward nearly fast enough that he is not ready. Will manages - only just - to keep his seat, to keep hold of the torch. He is aware of Hannibal's shouting, of the pursuit of the others behind him but it feels painfully slow. Will is aware of the gap spooling out behind him, how time seems suddenly to stretch so that Rata seems nearly to fly. 

Ahead, between the trees, he catches his first sight of the shadow he's chasing. It is low to the ground, running and wrong-shaped, springing faster than its ungainly gait should allow. The hind legs are longer than the fore, the body made for walking upright. 

He does his best to chase it, holding the torch as high as he dares - it is a human, he thinks, though the movements terrify him, the careless nakedness. Beyond shape, nothing identifies it as Randulf.

Nearer, he realizes that a growling is coming from him and it chills Will's blood. He does not dare lose Randulf now, not with the others so far behind. Will is nearly upon him, when Randulf turns suddenly, cutting in front of Rata. She balks, rearing up and squealing her half-bray sound in a tone Will has not heard.

An overhead branch yanks the torch from his hand, sending it spinning until it extinguishes and leaves Will blind in the sudden, total darkness. Something strikes Rata, making her stumble. She lurches and heaves again, twisting away from the impact until Will loses his seat and falls beneath her frantic hooves.

-


	5. valdr

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will scrambles for safety, uncertain which way is the safest. Once, one of Rata's hooves clips his side, winding Will when he has only begun to get his breath back. His heart is pounding and his breath feels locked into his chest. Will moves backward, and his eyes finally focus in the darkness.
> 
> A dull gleam of weak moonlight catches the metal of her bridle, and Rata looses her half-bray squeal. She bolts at last, done being brave now that she’s injured - Will can smell the bright copper scent of blood and his fear wakes as a living thing inside him, an animal as fierce as the one he now faced - alone in the dark.

Will scrambles for safety, uncertain which way is the safest. Once, one of Rata's hooves clips his side, winding Will when he has only begun to get his breath back. His heart is pounding and his breath feels locked into his chest. Will moves backward, and his eyes finally focus in the darkness.

A dull gleam of weak moonlight catches the metal of her bridle, and Rata looses her half-bray squeal. She bolts at last, done being brave now that she’s injured - Will can smell the bright copper scent of blood and his fear wakes as a living thing inside him, an animal as fierce as the one he now faced - alone in the dark. 

He can hear it breathing, moving in the darkness and Will hiccups his breath back in as his diaphragm unlocks, reaching for his knife. He has little idea what he intends to do with it, but he can feel that his bow is snapped, tangled around him and constricting, half caught on his quiver. The knife is something - _anything_.

He can hear the others shouting, crashing through the woods seeking Will. Perhaps they are still chasing Rata. He cannot yet get enough air to scream, eyes watering and vision swimming with the lack of air.

A growl splits the air around him, an instant before the points of pain come raking up his neck - like claws tearing at him, and just behind he can finally _see_ Randulf, the grotesque features, teeth bared in a hiss of air that Will feels against his face.the instant before claws tear up his cheek. His pained cry is hoarse, half coughed out of him, and then the creature is on him.

Will swings the knife wildly and feels it catch on bare flesh, before he loses track of everything. Dull pain in his shoulder - _teeth_ , he thinks - sharp pain in his stomach - _claws_. Randulf is heavy, his weight crushing Will down against the damp rotten leaves and half into a tangle of thorned plants. He thrashes, swinging his knife, fighting for leverage, for balance, for anything that might save him.

Claws sink deeper into his skin, catching on his ribs as Randulf tries to find the soft, vulnerable hollow of Will's belly. He knows - and the bright touch of it fuels him - that if Randulf claws open his belly, it's over. The monster will eat him, too, and grow stronger by its consumption. 

Will closes his eyes, gathering himself - he can only barely see with them open. It seems in the instant he closes his eyes the future rushes up to seize him, closing its teeth as solidly into Will's being as Randulf had into his shoulder.

He sees Hannibal from behind, in the early the early light of yellow dawn, with a stiffness and sagging posture that makes Will's heart sink. He is still in the woods, looking down at something at his feet. Will cannot see what it is, but he knows, has the conviction that it is something terrible. Something final that would change everything.

Then it changes, the scene jumps ahead and Will sees Hannibal riding as if driven by a burning brand. He sees Hannibal borne to the ground under Randulf, Illrhundr knocked clear off his feet by its inhuman strength. Randulf lunges, closing his teeth on Hannibal's throat.

Will wakes from his dream, shaken loose by agony and determination. He plunges his knife into Randulf's side, finally finding enough air to roar an answer to the creature's angry growl. Claws rake his skin as Randulf jerks backwards but don't finds purchase in anything vital and Will kicks up, kicks out, lending his force to Randulf's momentum, freeing himself. He turns over, grabbing for handholds on the ground, anything to scramble away out of reach.

Will fumbles for anything that might serve as a weapon, looking up, praying not to meet his end by running headlong into a tree. In the distance, he can see torchlight.

"Here!" he yells, "I"m here!"

A snarl warns him that his companions are not the only ones listening, and Will can hear the soft sounds of the monster's bare feet on the wet leaves. A shiver runs through him. _It is only a man._ Yet herin was such a monster as Will has never dreamed of, not even when his nightmares have been their worst.

Will runs toward the light, crouched low to the ground as the monster behind him must be, and he knows he is leading it back toward the party - but the best chance against it is in numbers.

"There," a voice shouts, strident - Ymir. "Lagbrotna, _there_ \- oh, shit."

Something heavy and alive crashes into Will again, taking him off his feet and laying him flat on the forest floor at the edge of the torchlight. Will hears the sounds of shrieking horses, of swords unsheathing.

Half-turned he gets a glimpse of Randulf above him and it is enough to freeze his blood in his veins. His eyes are wild, gleaming green with an ancient and terrible ferocity that is beyond both man and beast. They catch the light and reflect it, not a dull glow as Will's blue eyes seemed to, but throwing the light back as a weapon.

On his hands he has fashioned claws, cruel blades that must cut and discomfort him to use them hem - yet the pain seems outside his comprehension. His incisors seem long, sharp, his lips pulled back as if his teeth have grown too large for his mouth. Will's blade protrudes, plunged to the hilt in Randulf's side and yet seems to sting him no more than a horsefly.

Will realizes that he is wearing a rough armor - not leather but raw skin, pink as his own and in bloody tatters. He wants to close his eyes again, to have never seen this terror wrought only from the human shape, but the hypnotic green glow _forces_ him to look.

He hears Hannibal before he sees him, heavy rushing steps before the painful weight of Randulf is torn loose of him. Will rolls away, scrambling toward the light source. Freda's hands catch Will's and haul him up onto her horse behind her.

Nearby, Brunn and Ymir are trying to find shots in the dark, with bows drawn and expressions rendered into deep shadows; holes for eyes, caved mouths and voids of shadow at the contours. Brunn lowers his bow, frustrated - he is no longer the most accurate shooter.

On the ground, Hannibal and Randulf are fighting, close enough to foil any chance of good swordwork. It is a struggle now of strength and leverage, leaving Will's blood cold, his heart still pounding.

Randulf has somehow fashioned himself an animal, a strange one with hide and steel and leather. Jagged claws extend from his fingers and he uses his mouth as a weapon. Will can see the dagger still protruding from Randulf's side. He pushes Hannibal to the ground, and in the instant he is on top, a black fletched arrow sprouts from his back. Ymir exclaiming, then cursing when it seems to have no effect. The shaft crumples and breaks when Hannibal throws Randulf off. 

He lands on all fours, still for only a moment before he shakes himself - gore flies, the loose tattered skin draped over his back flapping and sliding out of place - it must be partially glued to Randulf's own skin by dried blood. The thought makes Will queasy, tightening his stomach in threat of sickness.

Another arrow strikes the dirt at Randulf's feet as he springs forward, and this time Brunn curses and Will feels Freda grow tense. She slips her knife from its sheath in a fluid motion - whether to defend if Randulf should suddenly turn or to find an opportunity to throw, Will can't be sure.

But the beast seems only to have eyes and anger for Hannibal, now that it has seen him. It does not look away, does not falter, does not consider the mounted warriors milling around the fight and looking for a shot. Their horses are nervous, fighting against moving closer with eyes rolling and white - even these brave animals cannot bear to be near so unnatural a predator. 

Randulf and Hannibal impact again, this time keeping balance. Hannibal catches it by the wrists, and then they test strength. Will can see his sword lost somewhere behind them on the ground, surrendered as useless when he will not be given the space to make effective use of it. 

For a moment they are locked as battling stallions or stags, each trying to find the tipping point of the other, before Randulf moves faster than the eye, striking at Hannibal's wrist with his teeth. Will hears Hannibal's gasp, and sees the blood drawn, sees Hannibal recoiling. He loses his hold on Randulf, Freda tenses as if to throw - her target now a clear hit, wide open and not looking. 

Then she lowers the knife again, making the clear decision to let Hannibal save himself or die.

Will snarls in pained frustration and drops down from the back of her horse, grabbing for anything as Randulf lashes out with his claws. He throws a handful of leaves and dirt, blinding the monster for a moment. 

Hannibal gets his hand on the knife hilt still protruding from Randulf's side and yanks it free, and Will leaps for him, driven by fear and anger and protectiveness. He cannot do much against the monster's fearsome strength except hold on, over the painful protests of his own injuries. Will wraps his arms around Randulf's neck and holds on, until he feels impact jar through the both of them.

Randulf shrieks and growls, spasming as Hannibal jams the blade deeper, dragging it up to slice the monster open. Will feels Randulf shift, holding harder to Hannibal with his terrible clawed hands before his strength begins to fail.

"Your gods have forsaken you," it growls. If will were not so close, he would have heard nothing but an animal's pained noises. "But ours have not forgotten us and they are _strong_ -"

The last ascends into a howl as Hannibal tears him open from navel to sternum with the knife. The smell of blood and bowel floods the air. 

Only then does Randulf's strength begin to fail him, and the sound transforms as he had, from pain and anger to a wet, bloody gurgle.

Will's weight carries them both over backwards, and even now he does not dare let go. The moments before impact have a strange buzzing quality to their silence, stretching and spooling out before they hit the ground.

Will looses his breath again when they collapse, and his head strikes something hard. His vision goes white, then dark.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -valdr, meaning wolf (one of several words for it)


	6. meizi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will rouses to confusion, briefly jostled. His head seems to be one giant ache, as if a dagger is lodged in the back of his skull. Will whimpers, protesting consciousness when under such torture and when he reaches for his head, his other injuries sing out to him - shoulder, arms, stomach. His face feels stiff.
> 
> Gentle fingers prod along Will's neck, feeling for his pulse with rough calluses catching on the soft skin. Will protests.

Will rouses to confusion, briefly jostled. His head seems to be one giant ache, as if a dagger is lodged in the back of his skull. Will whimpers, protesting consciousness when under such torture and when he reaches for his head, his other injuries sing out to him - shoulder, arms, stomach. His face feels stiff.

Gentle fingers prod along Will's neck, feeling for his pulse with rough calluses catching on the soft skin. Will protests. 

"Shh," the voice is Hannibal's, the touch shaky but his also. Will feels himself gathered up into Hannibal's arms and it hurts, but it's a reassurance. He closes his hands weakly into Hannibal's shirt, tangling his fingers absently into the laces over his chest as Hannibal shifts through his clothes, rifling them desperately. Cold air touches his skin, and Will protests again. 

"Shh," Hannibal repeats, "you're covered in blood. I need to see your injuries."

The words make little sense - it is Will's head that feels the worst, but Hannibal's fingers seem to find stinging wounds on every part of him - his belly, his arms. Last they touch his cheek gently, and Will realizes that he can taste blood, it is a fresh flavor in his mouth and it makes him feel suddenly sick with fear, irrationally afraid that it is _Randulf's_ blood and the thought freezes him cold and sours his stomach.

He claws at Hannibal to try and turn over, retching, and Hannibal does not give up his hold even when Will's fingers find the injury on his wrist and grip tight, helpless. Instead he lets Will turn halfway and makes soothing noises, supporting him up off the ground and holding Will's hair back from his face as he coughs and gags fruitlessly.

"When will you ever listen to me," Hannibal murmurs softly, without reproach. His tone is deep with worry. "When will you let me protect you?"

Will starts to wipe his mouth until agony stops him, one corner of his lip is torn, his cheek, his neck. It is only then that he begins to remember in more than parts and pieces. The white begins to recede from his vision. 

"Can we move him?" Brunn asks. He is holding the torch very close so Hannibal can see, Will can feel the heat and the brightness is too much for his eyes.

"Nothing is deep," Hannibal says, "but if he has broken bones - if something _inside_ is damaged..."

"He's no better off here in the middle of nowhere than back at Ró where he can be seen to," Ymir argues. "And _your_ injuries-"

"Would be far worse if not for Will's bravery," Hannibal snaps in answer. Will feels his chest expand in a deep breath that Hannibal lets out as a sigh. He makes a decision, but something in his expression tells Will he feels blind, feels the lack of certainty his gift would give him. Will reaches up to reassure him, unable to organize the words to say - instead he touches Hannibal's cheek gently for attention.

Dark eyes turn down toward Will, deeper than still water and perhaps wet.

"Home," Will requests, and Hannibal's arm's tighten around him. He swallows, then nods. Hannibal lifts him, waking all of the aches in his body though they cannot match the pain in his head. He is soothed some by Hannibal's nearness.

Many hands help to lift them both up onto Illrhundr, and Will is aware of the pained noises Hannibal makes, of his refusal to let anyone else take Will.

"Rata," Will remembers, and it seems urgent.

"She'll come home," Hannibal assures him. It does little to ease Will's concern, but they will not find her when they are injured and it is dark.

He remembers little of the ride - how tight his grip is on Hannibal's clothes, how carefully Hannibal holds him. His head hurts, and Will feels consciousness become a fluid thing - there when a sharp motion jostles him and then fading him. The smell and taste of blood refuses to fade.

They halt when a voice hails them, and Will dimly recognizes Fredrik's voice. He is glad to hear it in hushed conversation.

"Did you find it?"

"We killed him," Freda answers. "Or at least he wasn't moving when we left."

"It came out of nowhere and spooked my horse," Fredrik answers, "and then there was no stopping her - we ran all the way back to Ró."

"It's alright," Hannibal says. "It was so dark we could barely tell friend from foe."

There is a point hidden in the words, sharp and meant to chastise. Hannibal's muscles are trembling, however. Will can feel his exhaustion and wants nothing more than to go home. Will wishes the quiet ease of earlier would return - that he could know he would wake tomorrow as relaxed and at ease as he had the morning before. 

Yet, as they had in the spring a year and some ago, things have begun to change again. This time, Hannibal had not warned him against it. 

"In the morning we'll find the body and burn it," Hannibal tells them. "For now, we should be safe enough."

Will tightens his grip on Hannibal's shirt, starting to pull himself up. Hannibal's hand makes a broad soothing motion over his back. He turns Illrhundr up the path into Ró, getting them back into motion. Will can hear the others moving off in different directions, exhausted warriors, tired horses stumbling one even the easy paved streets. Will's head hurts, his chest feels like a cage in which his heart beats reverberantly, shaking aches loose with each beat. 

"How bad is it?" he asks, his mind moving slow to worry.

"Not so bad as we left him with," Hannibal answers, evasively. "Be patient, Will, we'll live."

It does not reassure him, but for the moment he will settle for the fact that they are alive, mostly whole. Time blurs again, seeming to recede like a wave from the shore of his mind. It only takes form again when Will feels them stop. He knows he has to get down, to uncramp his folded muscles, but he does not want to. He knows the change of position will pull his other injuries. 

"Carry me in," he protests, only half in jest. Hannibal snorts, looking warmly down at him.

"As one would a bride, or a _bale of hay_?" Hannibal muses, teasing. His eyes seem deeper in the dark, pulling shadows to them without losing warmth. He looks tired, shadows sitting heavy around his eyes, and at their corners.

Will eases himself gingerly down from Illrhundr's withers, grateful that his trip to the ground it shorter than it might have been. His body aches, stiffness already settled into his muscles. Will retreats quickly into the welcome warmth of the longhouse, finding that Matthias has fallen asleep but kept the fire warm. Will is grateful, though he is also glad to lock Matthias' door for the night.

He puts a kettle on, filling it with water until it nearly overflows and then peels off his shirt to assess the damage. It is his cheek that hurts the most, though there are several congealing sets of scratches on his abdomen. He looks - aptly - as if he has been mauled by an animal.

Hannibal enters, carrying his saddle as if the effort taxes him greatly, and Will remembers that he too had spent long moments in close to those grappling, tearing claws.

"Come and sit," Will orders, and determination makes the pain and pounding recede some from his head. "Take off your shirt."

Hannibal responds to Will's authoritative tone with an amused expression - and compliance. Will hisses when he sees the mess of scratches; though they are not dangerously deep they had all bled, and it is hard to tell how they'll heal.

" _Just_ my shirt?" Hannibal teases, the tone gentle to allay Will's worry. He reaches out, touching Will's cheek gently - the uninjured one. It soothes some of the worry from Will.

"We'd both best see to each other," Hannibal allows, and when he reaches for Will's other cheek, Will sees his wrist is still bleeding, oozing red black where Randulf had bitten and torn with his teeth - a fresh wound over the old scars. Then he winces as Hannibal traces his thumb over Will's top lip - finding a sharp pain - a tear. Will lifts his own hand to explore the cut and finds it has torn through his top lip entirely - it would explain the taste of blood in his mouth. 

He doesn't like the look of the bite on Hannibal's wrist, does not know what to make of his own injuries. He likes neither - perhaps as little as Hannibal likes the damage Will had risked. Will takes a shaky breath, looking up at Hannibal

"Why didn't you _feel_ it?" he asks, feeling like he has thrown a heavy stone in deep water, without knowing what fears live beneath the surface.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -meizi, an injury  
> -These chapters beta'd by Quedarius (https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quedarius/pseuds/Quedarius), and the titlecard art you've seen on Tumblr is hers as well. I owe a debt of many mules.  
> -This update makes its way to you a day early, so as not to interfere with Tristhad week and so you don't have to wait an extra week! It will be back to it's sunday updates in the future. :)


	7. ǫndóttr

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smoke stretches skyward and the heat of the day is bolstered by licking flames, by the crackling of the logs built up into not just a pyre but a conflagration. it was more than Hannibal had ordered, but people had seen the body dragged back from the woods, and how even animals would not touch or go near it. This was not a burial but a _sterilization_.
> 
> "Will there be others?" Will asks, keeping his tone low. He works his nails absently, lightly against his damaged cheek.
> 
> "Unlikely," Hannibal says, his dark eyes settling on Will's scratching fingers and staring until Will lowers his hand away. "But not impossible. The Imperials may respond with revulsion or fascination."

Smoke stretches skyward and the heat of the day is bolstered by licking flames, by the crackling of the logs built up into not just a pyre but a conflagration. it was more than Hannibal had ordered, but people had seen the body dragged back from the woods, and how even animals would not touch or go near it. This was not a burial but a _sterilization_.

"Will there be others?" Will asks, keeping his tone low. He works his nails absently, lightly against his damaged cheek.

"Unlikely," Hannibal says, his dark eyes settling on Will's scratching fingers and staring until Will lowers his hand away. "But not impossible. The Imperials may respond with revulsion or fascination."

Will doesn't care for the idea. Suddenly, the slaves seem like a potential danger, and there is nearly one in every home - though the bulk had been sent away, either to Britta's tribe or with the demolished remains of the Surdik, now barely enough for even two tribes.

"Hannibal," Will says, unable to distinguish now the remains of Randulf's body from the rest of the ashes. "Are they really so unhappy that _this_ seems an alternative?"

With a steady hand, Hannibal catches Will's worrying fingers before he can pull the scab from his lip again.

"Would it have appealed to you?" he asks, stroking his fingers over the back of Will's knuckles.

To answer, Will has to consider the entire terrifying proposition. To rend and consume flesh - even of his friends, as Randulf had - to transform himself on the inside and forget the limitations of his outside.

Perhaps, Will allows, thinking of his very darkest moments. His past is a long, dark road in which perfect moments of misery preserve themselves. He can pick them up and look at them, if he likes, flies in amber. He has not cared to in some time. There hasn't been a need to dwell on them, not with a new future and a new place laid down before him.

"Not since you stole me," Will admits. Life here, even as a slave, has been far from unbearable. He curls his fingers into Hannibal's grip and flexes them together.

"I think there's not much to worry about," Hannibal says.

Will hopes, with the thick wood-smoke smell wafting around them and his face stiff and aching, healing to scars, that Hannibal is right. He lifts their joined hands together, pressing his thumb against his sore lip and wishing it would stop cracking when he spoke.

"Leave it," Hannibal says, leaning in to speak against Will's ear, tone a playful purr.

"I can't think of anything else," Will mutters in an undertone, but he does lower their hands away. 'How bad does it look?"

"It suits you," Hannibal tells him. "You earned them with your valor, wolf-slayer."

The tone is still in good spirits, and Will does not resist the title or the reassurances. Perhaps the scars _will_ suit him, when his face has healed from it's itching mass of scabs and tender bruises.

Hannibal presses his mouth over the ache in Will's cheek gently, soothing. For a moment, the irritation fades. His own healing wounds are covered by linen, worn openly under an unbuttoned vest as a sign of victory. And, Will allows, an admission of the heat. He keeps his own covered, buried beneath layers to feel less vulnerable.

There is still a question unanswered between them, sitting heavy on Will's awareness like the new scars on his hide. Tonight, however, now that the pyre is burned, is a time for celebration. The warriors will gather, the village will breathe a sigh, and even the Imperials will join them in feasting.

Will looks forward to the distraction it promises.

"Will?" Hannibal asks, sensing his distance - though he has only gone as far as his thoughts. He closes his mouth on the lobe of Will's ear, gentle with his teeth, and Will shoves him, laughing.

"He's not coming back," Hannibal assures Will, and once that would have seemed absolute, but now - well. He has not lost _his_ gift. Will resolves to keep an eye on the future. For now, he leaves the smoldering remains behind, following Hannibal toward the cleared square where others are making ready for the evening.

The day has already been long, and festivities - if the simple pride in survival could be called such - promised to last long into the night.

Will begs leave for a nap, and Hannibal releases his hand reluctantly.

"I wish I could join you."

"Neither of us would sleep," Will says, and it's half a promise for later. "Our healing hides would not thank us for it."

Hannibal allows Will's points to stand, but his smile spreads slow on his features with his own thoughts. Will knows him well enough that he does not need to ask to guess their bent. 

"Leave your face be," Hannibal reminds him, letting Will go.

Will is pleased to find the longhouse empty, and he settles down in the deep furs, shedding all his layers but the bandages, and sleep finds him quickly. Will drifts for a while, and the sensation is like laying on his back and floating in a current, unhurried. It is not an unsettling dream, even when the darkness fades to white, revealing he is not in the ocean but sinking deep in white snow, cold and quiet but still at peace.

Above him, trees, the moon. The start of wolf-song rises nearby, single and lonesome. It is high pitched, a rising note that wavers, catches, drops and lifts again, sorrowful. Will finds tears in his eyes, sprung up so intensely they brim over.

He pulls himself out of the snow, finding he is wrapped in his black cloak. Between the trees, he can see the howling animal, heavy body braced into the motion, head lifted. The silver-brown coat stands out against the snow, mouth a hollow cave breathing sound and steam. Mournful.

Nothing answers.

Will awakes with a lingering sadness and the smell of wood smoke still clinging to him. The air has cooled around him, and Will regrets his choice to strip so thoroughly when he shivers, and it pulls at his scabs.

He pulls a fresh shirt from the chest at the end of the bed, hearing the sound of bawdy song somewhere outside. The dream fades from his mind, and Will steps out of the longhouse into a world of intense firelight and shifting shadow. They have built a bonfire in the clearing around the entrance to the caves. To Will's relief, the door is closed.

The smells of cooking food, of beer and hot cow's milk and chocolate all reach Will. It seems the entire village is here, sitting in circles and groups by the warm fire.

"Will!" Ymir's voice calls somewhere in the crowd. There are so many people gathered together Will doesn't see his friend. A hand lifts from a group seated on a massive beam pulled from the damaged and dissembled siege machines. Brunn is seated next to him, shirtless and smiling. 

Will moves toward them, glad to see them relaxed and happy, some magic working between food and firelight. Will amends, judging by Ymir's flushed face, that beer has some little to do with it, also.

"Here's the hero of the day," Ymir greets, finding a cup to push into Will's hands, though it makes a wobbling, uncertain trip through the night air toward him.

"Hardly," Will says, compelled to take the wooden cup before Ymir spills it on him.

"You faced down the monster," Brunn says, encouraging Will to accept his accolades. "you can't deny it - it's all over your face."

"Hannibal killed it - _him_ ," Will insists. He had only tried to protect the others, and thinks that he took the worst of the damage after his encounters with Randulf.

"Sure," Ymir says. "But you _caught_ it."

Will allows that, for better or worse, he had. He takes a long drink of beer. It is cool, but not cold, welcome and warm in his belly. "I might argue it caught me."

Brunn laughs at his modesty, and Ymir eyes him sharply, as if about to scold him for his refusal to take even a little credit. Will smiles, and moves away - before the subject moves on to more personal topics.

Brunn and Ymir lean comfortably into each other as he leaves, lowering their voices to share stories and secrets, and Will is glad to see them in high spirits. He finds another circle of seated villagers, and finds Fredrik and Freda amongst them. They are seated together and listening to the heroic retelling of the village's resistance of a brutal assault and siege by the fearsome Imperial army.

Will settles down nearby, drawn into the story by the skillful telling, even though he knows it already. He drinks and listens to each warrior add remembered details of triumph. These parts, Will hadn't known - had taken place when he was lying injured on the field.

He replaces his beer with a mug of chocolate, enjoying the spiced sweetness and the warmth spreading into his hands.

"Here's my favorite part," Fredrik tells Will, when the storyteller describes his dramatic arrival with Britta's assembled army. Will notices a new love-bite under Fredrik's chin and supposes that the joy at being alive was as strong in the other survivors.

"You might have come a little sooner," Will reminds him. 

"And deny Lagbrotna his dramatic victory?" Fredrik shakes his head - playing along as if there had been no chance. 

Will laughs. The distance of time and ease and new problems make it easy to leave the pain out of the memories and feel the victory instead.

Strong hands settle on Will's shoulders, touching to warn of his presence. Hannibal lets go for a moment, and then a shining shard of metal eases down into his line of sight, strung on a braided cord. A necklace.

Hannibal fastens the cord gently around Will's neck, the shining metal piece settling against his collar bone, flat. Will touches it, before he realizes what it is. A claw, severed from the artificial set Randulf had made for himself.

Will knows it is a trophy, a reminder of bravery and survival. He still isn't sure he likes it touching his skin. Hannibal adjusts it, and Will catches his wrist, fingers closing over bandages. There is a strange, almost sweet smell clinging to Hannibal's skin.

Something sticky seeps through the bandage to Will's fingers and he hears Hannibal's soft intake of breath. Will turns around and looks up to find Hannibal wearing a similar necklace, the claw laying against his chest and catching firelight. A dark stain mars the bandage on his arm.

Will knows not to ask, with so many ears around, but resolve to bribe Hannibal away to have a look as soon as possible.

"A warrior wears the claws of such animals as challenge him," Hannibal tells him, "and no matter what I feel about it, you are certainly a warrior."

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -ǫndóttr - firey, a fire  
> -these two chapters do not have the benefit of my lovely Beta's attention, due to time constraints. Please be patient with any grammatical errors... if you catch anything glaring, drop a comment and I'll repair it, though I think I've gotten most of the hiccups out!


	8. vǫlva

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The house is dark an empty when they return, and Hannibal hurries Will through the door, mouth fixed on the back of his neck, hands hot over his chest. He turns in Hannibal's arms, letting their bodies ease together, his skin against Hannibal's flushed with heat as Hannibal claws off his shirt, letting it fall to the floor.
> 
> Will kisses him fiercely, unrelenting until the pain in his lip suggests it has split open again, and an old-blood taste spreads between their mouths. Will draws back, pressing his tongue to the injury and Hannibal smiles at him, pleased and predatory.

The house is dark an empty when they return, and Hannibal hurries Will through the door, mouth fixed on the back of his neck, hands hot over his chest. He turns in Hannibal's arms, letting their bodies ease together, his skin against Hannibal's flushed with heat as Hannibal claws off his shirt, letting it fall to the floor.

Will kisses him fiercely, unrelenting until the pain in his lip suggests it has split open again, and an old-blood taste spreads between their mouths. Will draws back, pressing his tongue to the injury and Hannibal smiles at him, pleased and predatory.

He presses Will back against the table, half hoisting him onto it with a clatter of cups. Will leans back on his hands, tipping his chin up to let Hannibal have access to his neck. He traces his tongue over each of the forming scars there, tasting Will's pulse. It's a connection that seems electric, a current that pulls his attention wherever on his skin Hannibal directs it.

"Hannibal," Will sighs, easing one hand into his braid, tugging lightly at it to encourage Hannibal down further, to rush his tracing tongue down from Will's sternum. He can feel the heat of Hannibal's scalp, the hair sweat-damp at the nape of his neck.

It seems out of place, somehow, in the cool of the night air around them. Will moves his hand to the back of Hannibal's neck and finds the skin not just warmed with passion but hot and clammy with fever. Will opens his eyes and becomes suddenly aware of two things - Hannibal's hot breath warming the fabric over his groin and the fact that they are no longer alone in the space.

He digs his nails into Hannibal's shoulders in surprise, clawing marks into Hannibal's skin, trying instinctively to drag Hannibal up against himself, to hide behind Hannibal's body.

Matthias stands in the shadows at the end of the hall, eyes locked on Will with unabashed focus. It turns the heat in him suddenly cold, before Matthias smiles chillingly at Will, vanishing into his own room and closing the door.

"Hannibal," Will hisses, and Hannibal gets off his knees. Will turns away from his kiss, cold and unsettled, hoisting himself off of the table and leading Hannibal toward their room.

"You have a fever," Will tells him.

Hannibal groans, heated breath over Will's skin. "You noticed?"

Will takes a deep breath, closing the door behind them an gesturing to the bed, "I noticed."

For the moment, he discards the worry over Matthias. His inappropriate and unsettling behavior can wait. Will pushes Hannibal down onto the bed when he hesitates, and begins checking his bandages. The ones over Hannibal's chest seem dry and clean. 

"Show me," Will demands, pinning Hannibal with his weight over his thighs.

"It's not-" Hannibal begins, and Will _growls_ in answer, pushing cool fingers against Hannibal's forehead. The heat there is intense. When he pushes his fingers against Hannibal's pulse it is fast - and fluttering, not simply with excitement.

"It is," Will tells him, and reaches for Hannibal's arm, remembering the wetness he had felt earlier. That bandage is soaked through, and the sweet-bitter smell touches against Will's senses again.

He unwinds the sticking bandage, finding it wetter with watery red-black blood and pus before he dislodges it from the wound. It drips a fresh wave of discharge, and Hannibal winces.

"Hannibal," Will scolds, looking up at him. He finds Hannibal's eyes faintly glassy, and he doesn't resist Will's exploratory touches, and Will leaves him with a warning press of his hand. He fetches clean water and a cloth. Beneath all the mess, the blood coming from the wound a concerning sick-black color where it seeps and clings in the ridge of his old scar.

Beneath, the marks cut by Randulf's teeth have grown and spread. Will wipes dark discharge off, and fresh yellow fluid oozes up. The skin around them is swollen, purpled and threatening to split further, unable to drain fast enough to relieve the tears in his skin.

Will hisses through his teeth. 

"This is infected," he says, needing no healer to tell him - every sign is there. "You need the healer."

Hannibal turns his hand in Will's, curling their fingers together. "I have seen one."

Will waits, disliking that Hannibal had kept this from him, hating to feel protected.

"They lanced the wounds and bled them," Hannibal says, " cleaned them with some stinging potion. Here you see the results."

Will puts the dirty cloth aside and eases Hannibal's injured appendage into his lap, feeling the heat of the wounds beneath his fingers. "Will they take the arm?"

Hannibal's expression darkens. He shakes his head. "We are not there yet."

Will curls their hands together, leaning down to kiss Hannibal. His mouth is hot, his lips dry, and Will worries for him. He retrieves fresh bandages and discards the old ones, binding crushed aloe leaves against the wounds to try and ease the swelling. By the time he has finished re-wrapping them, Hannibal is asleep.

He watches with concerned eyes before he reaches out to undo Hannibal's braid, gone messy and damp with sweat. He brushes it straight gently, until the comb passes through it easily. Will presses a wet, folded cloth to Hannibal's forehead, and curls up next to him to sleep.

Troubled dreams steal over Will slowly, half-formed images that refuse to solidify. Cold, and then it fades to burning heat. Will wakes up after only a couple hours of sleep, dragging himself away from the radiating heat.

Hannibal is sweating and shivering. Will worries, with little idea of what to do. It is barely light outside, early sunlight easing in through the high-set window to paint Hannibal's skin an ominous red.

Will shakes him awake gently, and Hannibal's eyes open, glassy and dazed. He swallows and Will can almost hear his throat click.

"Will...?" he asks, and then shivers. Will prods him until he crawls beneath the blanket.

"Are you thirsty?" Will asks, and Hannibal looks at him mildly, faintly suspicious. Will pushes a cup against his mouth until he drinks, then tucks him more deeply into the furs and goes to find help.

In the main room he hesitates, feeling uncertain, unsettled. Acutely aware of Hannibal's weakness and the way Matthias had watched them the previous night. He does not like to think of the man as a viper in their home, but he does not trust him not to take an opportunity if he sees one.

Will swings the door open to look in on Matthias carefully. He still sleeps, or pretends very well. Will closest he door and locks Matthias inside, still uncertain of his plan.

For a long moment, he stands lost, in the main room of the longhouse. Will grips his wrists, running his thumbs absently against the places where his shackles had once rested.

The absent motion makes up his mind. Will knows who he can ask, who he trusts with the information that Hannibal is weak and sick.

He wakes Fredrik with persistent knocking, pounding at the door until the man answers, dark eyed and bleary. He wears an angry expression for the interrupted sleep. He looks exhausted and Will feels some sympathy for him.

"Come in," Fredrik says, taking in Will's half-dressed condition the desperate expression on his face and taking pity on him.

He holds the door open, and Will slips inside. Fredrik yawns widely, and then leans comfortably against one of the support beams, waiting for Will to explain himself

"Hannibal's unwell," Will says, and then feels that his hesitancy has caused him to understate. " _Sick_."

Fredrik's gaze grows more alert. "Sick how?"

"The bite - the one Randulf gave him on his arm," Will says. "It's gone black and it-"

He draws a shaking breath, "the wound is sour and he has a fever."

Admitting it is both a relief and an anxiety, sharing the burden that he would rather not.

"Is he conscious?" Fredrik asks.

"Asleep," Will answers, "fitfully."

"We should get the healer," Fredrik says, passing his hand over his face, gathering his thoughts.

"He's already been," a third voice interrupts, drawling low and feminine from the back of the longhouse. Freda steps clear of their sleeping room, dressed only in a long tunic. "The healer here has very weak magic. He needs a völva."

Will is inclined to agree that the wound goes beyond anything Will has ever seen. He looks back at Fredrik, who arches his brows and makes a noncommittal expression that suggests he does not want to defer to Freda. Will takes the burden from him.

"Where can we find one?" Will asks.

Freda eyes him blandly, waiting for the answer to occur without further prompting from her.

"Britta," he realizes.

"If any one will know the source and solution for a wolf bite delivered by a man," Freda says, "It is like to be Britta or Margret. You'd better hope Lagbrotna is still fit to ride.”

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -vǫlva, a viking witch, sometimes a healer and sometimes not. Either way you usually want to be on their good side!


	9. gæta

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will steadies Hannibal carefully in the saddle, holding tight to keep him in place and upright. Rata is very patient with the extra weight, with Will's constant shifting to try and see around Hannibal's taller form. This had been easier, he thinks, the other way around.

Will steadies Hannibal carefully in the saddle, holding tight to keep him in place and upright. Rata is very patient with the extra weight, with Will's constant shifting to try and see around Hannibal's taller form. This had been easier, he thinks, the other way around.

Hannibal radiates heat, upright only by the barest force of his willpower, by Will's arm around his waist and front pressed to Hannibal's back. He is conscious, but he murmurs only low sounds in streams of words in the Imperial tongue that seem to drift in and out of lucid thought.

It seems strange, until Will realizes it's the tongue of his childhood, that he has only come to learn Ardik later. He dislikes letting Freda see him like this, dislikes needing Matthias' assistance but he requires both. Freda rides ahead, leading them, pretending not to notice.

Matthias _stares_ , openly attentive with a gaze that seems not to falter or blink. Whenever Will glances back, the slave rides with all his attention on Will and Hannibal's slack form. He isn't sure how to correct Matthias - isn't sure that he can issue an order with any authority and he knows that to give an order and be unable to enforce it will only make things worse.

"Hannibal," he says in a murmur, as the volume of the other's voice rises a little. It trails off, and Will feels him pull in a breath.

"I hope you appreciate how hard it is without you," Will tells him quietly, and it seems to distract Hannibal from his litany for a few moments. "And I feel like you intentionally make it that way."

Quiet answers, the sound of hooves and Will looks around Hannibal again, making sure Rata is still following Freda and Illrhundr. She leads Hannibal's horse, his ungainly stride seeming long and lazy. 

Hannibal speaks in a low murmur, finding enough lucidity to answer in Ardik, "I have faith in you."

To Will's disbelief, Hannibal sounds amused, though his voice drifts a little and his body stays slack in Will's grip.

"That's one of us," Will says, making a reassuring gesture against Hannibal's middle with his fingers.

"I suppose I have to admit now," Hannibal answers, "That I no longer have any guidance."

It is not a surprise but Will still doesn't like to hear it out loud. He glances back, anxiously, at Matthias. The slave is still watching them, but Will does not think he can hear. 

"That is the most inspired thing you've said in a few days," Will says, trying to play along with his good humor. It is better than letting the terror that Hannibal might be dying forsaken by the gods and helpless to know the right way to go to save himself.

"Do you know what's happening?" Will asks after the tail end of Hannibal's frail chuckle - a weak sound that ends in a cough.

"Sour wound," Hannibal says, with a bland glance back at Will, as if he knows the answer is an obstinate one.

"I've seen those before," Will says, letting his tone turn sharp in his whispering. "This is too fast. It goes beyond infection."

"You asked for my understanding of the situation," Hannibal mutters, "I got bitten, and now I'm sick."

A sudden, terrifying thought occurs to Will, the idea of Hannibal slowly transforming into the same sort of monster that Randulf had become. That had been quick - nearly instant - and this was not making Hannibal stronger but slowly draining him.

Hannibal leans back against him, and eases a hand back to curl at Will's side, catching hold of his tunic. 

"Ne cures," he breathes, and Will knows enough of the Imperial tongue to understand. As if he could cease worrying now. Beyond that, Hannibal falls quiet, sweating and shivering as the day wears on toward evening.

Freda draws back, riding alongside Will as the air cools and the night insects begin to sing. She looks at Hannibal, measuring so that she does not have to ask, and then she tosses her hair back off her shoulders.

"We'd best make camp," she suggests, "Britta might have moved since Hannibal last dropped in on her, and I can only lead so well in the dark." 

Will doesn't know if they should delay - isn't sure if Hannibal can afford it. He can no more lead them in the dark than she can. Instead, he feels the weight of the decision and his lack of authority. He cannot make Freda lead them onward like Hannibal could. He cannot flex power he does not have.

"Alright," he says, drawing Rata to a halt. "We should start a fire. I'll need hot water, and better not to seem like we're trying to sneak up on her."

Freda snorts, swinging down from her horse. " _You_ couldn't even dream of it."

Will supposes not, given first welcome they had gotten from her.

He eases down carefully, pulling Hannibal after, gathering his loose, heavy form against himself to keep from dropping him. Hannibal seems strengthless, though he eases his arms around Will's neck and leans against him.

"Frigus," Hannibal mutters, and Will supposes he won't get any more sense until Hannibal's fever goes down. He repeats the word against Will's skin until Will can ease him down, piling blankets on top of him. It seems to ease some of Hannibal's distress when even the horse blankets are piled over him.

Will helps Freda and Matthias build the fire, glad to have its warmth. He heats water to clean Hannibal's wound, and to make it safe for him to drink, throwing in a handful of dried flowers. Will knows now that Hannibal grows them himself - he had carried the seeds back with him from Imperial territory. 

Will remembers Hannibal telling him that, relaying some small part of his past as they worked in the small garden behind the longhouse. It was a quiet moment in his memory, a good one that he holds onto now as he unbinds Hannibal's wound and cleans it as best he can, the bandages soaked through with the black fluid again.

He pours himself a cup after giving Hannibal some in slow sips, his hands filthy from his work. he feels exhausted, but keeps his eyes on Hannibal, vigilant. 

Freda sits down next to him after arranging her dinner to cook on the fire while Matthias sees to all the horses. Will does not meet her gaze, holding his question on his tongue until it no longer sounds like an accusation.

"Why did you hesitate?" Will asks at last.

He sees Freda turn her head to look at him in her peripheral vision, sees how long it takes her to try and puzzle out his meaning.

" _When_ did I hesitate?" she asks at last. Will thinks guilt has led her to the answer already perhaps, but she does not want to admit it. She wants Will to play his hand first.

"When Randulf and Hannibal were fighting," Will says, keeping his tone even. "You had a chance to throw your knife. You didn't take it."

Freda shifts, and Will keeps his eyes off of her so he can stay less upset. She reaches out to turn the food over. 

"I didn't hesitate," she says, with a faint shrug. "I just chose not to. When has the great _Lagbrotna_ ever needed anyone else's help before?"

Her tone isn't quite bitter. She is not mad or vengeful. Will glances at her at last and reads only cool dispassion in her eyes. Self interest, perhaps. He resolves not to be parted from Hannibal's side, feeling suddenly hunted and alone. Hannibal - Lagbrotna - could manage all of these conflicting interests and make from them a unified tribe.

His sickness left an alarming number of jackals in the pack, circling.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -gæta - to guard, to keep watch over, to attend  
> -My amazing beta is currently enjoying a well earned vacation and will be for the next month or so. I've read through and tried to catch any obvious mistakes, but please be patient if my spelling and grammar suffers a little. Thanks folks!


	10. afráð

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will cannot bring himself to sleep beneath the covers next to Hannibal - it is too hot. Within half an hour he gives up the attempt, sweating and crawling out into the comparatively cooler air, his skin sticking to itself with every motion. The fire has burned down to coals, smoking and trailing away into the darkness.

Will cannot bring himself to sleep beneath the covers next to Hannibal - it is too hot. Within half an hour he gives up the attempt, sweating and crawling out into the comparatively cooler air, his skin sticking to itself with every motion. The fire has burned down to coals, smoking and trailing away into the darkness.

Will doesn't go far from Hannibal, just moves out of contact. The night air feels blissful on his skin, and exhaustion keeps his thoughts slow. When he sleeps, mournful howls ghost against his awareness though he is barely drifting. One wolf howling, somewhere alone. Will cannot see it in the darkness, and his body feels paralyzed, unresponsive to his desire to look for the animal. For a time, he sits between dreaming and waking, arms around his knees and cognizant of his body but without the command of it.

It's the heat of the sun rising, touching his back and soaking warmth - then heat - through his shirt that finally breaks the spell. Will rouses as if from a daze and finds Freda already packing camp, giving orders to Matthias to help.

"He won't wake," Freda tells Will, "and for a moment, you wouldn't either. Were you looking into the future?"

Will shakes his head, rousing himself and going to Hannibal. "I'm afraid of what I'd see."

He speaks in an undertone, more to himself than aloud. Hannibal is hot to the touch, limp, but his heartbeat is still steady, his breathing deep and slow. He doesn't rouse when Will pulls the blankets away or shakes him, and Will hopes the trip today is short.

"Will you be able to hold him up?" Freda asks, watching him drag Hannibal toward Rata. "Maybe it's better to sling him over his own saddle at this point."

"No," Will says firmly. "I can hold him. Just help me get him up."

Freda eyes will with a measure of scepticism, then shrugs carelessly - it does not matter to her if he wants to tire himself out to preserve the last shreds of Hannibal's dignity. She helps Will lift Hannibal into place, and then ties him fast to the saddle at Will's direction.

Matthias watches these proceedings closely but with an impassive expression, holding the horses until Freda claims hers, swinging up. She takes Illrhundr's lead-line and lifts herself in her stirrups to get her bearings.

"Do you think they've moved far?" Will asks, surprised that no scout had come upon their camp in the night.

"How would I know?" Freda asks, irritably. "If they're smart, they've moved."

Will allows that without the sort of fortifications that Ró enjoyed, it would be wise to keep moving, to make it harder for potential enemies to locate you. Even given the relative peace the tribes have enjoyed while they recovered, a long history of warfare lay behind them, and Margrit has the strongest claim of lineage at current.

Anyone seeking - as Hannibal was - to unite what was left of the Surdik and Ardik would need either her endorsement or to eliminate her. Will can't blame Britta for her paranoia.

He follows behind Freda, trusting Rata to keep going while he holds Hannibal upright and steady. There is no murmuring today, Hannibal's eyes are closed and he seems to have gone deeply within himself.

A sharp, high whistle catches Will's attention, carried to him on the breeze like a Hawks call from overhead. A second whistle answers - Freda responding to some old code she well remembers, and then changing course to meet up with the scout.

They are lucky, it's Bavōrr, and she seems happy enough to see them. Her dark, pretty eyes crinkle up at the corners before her expression changes to confusion.

"What's wrong with _him_?" she says, by way of greeting. "Too much to drink?"

Her good humor fades when she sees Will, tired and haggard. She turns a glance toward Freda and reads some seriousness in her expression, dismissing Matthias' presence with barely a glance.

"What's the nature of his sickness?" she demands, good humor fading. She looks fierce, worried, and Will realizes she intends to protect her tribe from the danger of disease.

"He was bitten," Will tells her quickly. "He needs to see a healer, _please_."

Bavōrr eyes him skeptically, then runs her gaze over Hannibal, lingering on his bandaged forearm.

"Well," she says, leaning back on her shaggy mount. "You want a völva, you have to come to us."

"We've come to you," Will agrees, shifting Hannibal so he can see around him more easily.

"Well," Bavōrr says, "better come along, then. I guess as long as you can pay, Britta will see to even Lagbrotna himself."

The statement worries him some, but Will makes no objection - it was fair to charge for their services, and Will thinks he can pay whatever they ask, that he can negotiate a fair price - and perhaps no price is really unfair, given what he will receive.

Bavōrr leads them deeper into the valley that Britta's tribe has made into their territory, turning further south toward the coast than Will remembers. 

"How's your pet?" Bavōrr asks Freda, making light, teasing and glad to see an old friend.

"Well, he's not any better at cooking," Freda answers, smug. "But Fredrik is well. In fact, he's looking after Ró while we're gone."

"He's come up in the world."

They both laugh, and somehow it feels worlds away, like Will is listening from a distance underwater. The world around him is muffled, stifled somehow. Will supposes he is just exhausted.

He follows, numb and aware of the heat of Hannibal's body, of how slack he is against Will's hold. He is grateful that the camp - familiar, vibrantly emblazoned tents with their guardian spirits - comes quickly into view. Will can feel Bavōrr watching him curiously, and mild irritation creeps beneath his skin. Will has forgotten, in the comfort in Ró, what it is to be unusual.

When they reach the camp, a flurry of activity erupts, Bavōrr looking for Britta, hands reaching up quickly to untie and take Hannibal - so obvious is his need for attention. Will remembers the frowning Matron who had seen to Fredrik - and to his own wounds. He hopes she will quickly be brought to see to Hannibal.

Margrit appears from her tent, eyes cold, very still in the flurry of motion. She watches everything with attention, but does not involve herself. 

"Seer!" 

Will's attention returns suddenly when he realizes he is being called.

"What is the nature of this ailment?" Britta demands pushing through the crowd to grab hold of Rata's bridle, as if afraid Will might run.

"A bite," Will says, feeling it's woefully inadequate. He swings down from Rata's back, staying close to Hannibal as the women arrange him flat on a large leather hide so they can carry him off.

"Not just any bite," Britta observes, when the black-stained bandages come into sight.

Will notes with some alarm that Hannibal's fingers look swollen and dark on that side, fingertips flushed almost as dark as the fluid seeping from the wound. Britta seizes Will's arm hard at the elbow and turns him to look at her, eyes bright with displeasure - but at least, he prays, no hostility. No open threat.

"Seer," she says, speaking slowly as though he were simple. " _What_ has bitten him?"

The anger her tone wakes gathers Will's thoughts back together from the reaches of overwhelming worries they have wandered off to. 

"There was a Lycaon-" Will starts, struggling with the foreign and soft sounding word. He thinks it sounds entirely _too_ yielding for the beast it names. "Hannibal says it is a God's blessing - to turn a man into an animal of sorts."

Britta seems to know the term. She bids Hannibal be seen to, that Freda and Bavōrr should see to themselves and their animals, and does not loose her steely hold on the Will's arm, dragging him along through the bustling women who are making her orders happen. She pushes him roughly into her own tent.

"Tell me again," she demands, now that they are outside of hearing.

A moment later, as Will gathers his thoughts, Margrit enters. Her eyes are distant and cool in their regard of him. Britta does not challenge her presence, and under their gaze, Will does his best not to feel small. 

He straightens his back, beginning. "One of the slaves transformed himself somehow - by consuming the flesh of two others. He - tore them apart. Ate them like a wolf might."

Will pauses to shake the memory away, half hoping he has said enough, but the two warleaders wait, still attending his explanation. 

"It changed him. His mind, anyway. He became immensely strong, and no pain stopped him. He was like an animal - only with far more rage than I have ever seen in a beast," Will says. "he had claws-"

He displays the gruesome metal trophy around his own neck, and the healing scratches on his cheek, even now feeling the stretch of the scab on his lip. 

"That's what bit Hannibal," Will finishes, still seeing no sign of reaction on Britta's expression.

"Is it coming after you?" Britta asks, warningly.

"No," Will says. "It's dead. The infection didn't set in immediately. The body is burned and gone."

That, at last, seems to please Britta some. She looks to Margrit, and some secret passes between them in the glance, something that Will cannot read. 

"Was anyone else bitten?" Britta asks, with her eyes on Will's injuries.

Will displays the marks on his shoulder and collar bone, seeing no reason to hide them - they are healing cleanly.

"Only you and him?"

"Only us. Others fought it, but none came close enough to be injured."

Britta's expression softens only a touch, and while Will cannot be certain why, it reassures him that Britta will at least consider his plea for aid.

"I am glad to hear it's dead, Seer," she allows. "I only hope the idea isn't catching. We quite value our slaves."

Will supposes they would. The tribe is far from incapable, but the status of owning men - from the Imperium, no less - gave them a marked advantage in recognition. Will is glad of their equality, though he worries still that the price they ask will be high to satisfy their pride.

"It seems too extreme to become common," he says.

"He speaks unwarlike in a land of war," Margrit says - it is the first time he has heard her speak directly to him. He remembers the quiet, hard landscape of her thoughts, having once reached into her fate.

"I think we should all know how little I think of war," Will says, sharply. If they were going to remind him that he was a Seer and not truly one of the Ardik, _they_ could well remember what that meant.

Britta only smiles, pleased with his ferocity. "I will go and see what is to be done. Wait here and rest."

She pauses, as if uncertain about what to say next, seeming torn between reassuring him and the chance her words might be false. Finally, she takes the safe course and exits, leaving him alone with Margrit.

She fixes her eyes on him, her dull and level gaze capturing his bright one and says, "let us talk about your payment."

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- afráð, payment due


	11. verð

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will emerges from the tent some time later, numb and uncertain what to make of the price demanded. He would have paid any price in gold of course, any amount of trade that would not have ruined the people of Ró, but he had not expected the favor asked. Somewhere in his mind, he had known it would not be simple.

Will emerges from the tent some time later, numb and uncertain what to make of the price demanded. He would have paid any price in gold of course, any amount of trade that would not have ruined the people of Ró, but he had not expected the favor asked. Somewhere in his mind, he had known it would not be simple.

It hardly benefitted Margrit's position to help so strong a rival, and Will well knew that their previous alliance had been only tentative. He is grateful that Hannibal had been generous with the spoils of their victory.

"Will?" The voice is familiar, calling through his haze as he wanders. He had asked - and been granted - time to consider, but his mind refused to stretch far enough to encompass the idea. Looking up, he sees Alannah, approaching him with a clear intent to speak.

He finds himself glad to see her, though they don't know each other very well. She is steady and brave, and she smiles just a little when she sees that he remembers her.

"Alannah," he says, pausing to let her draw up alongside him. "Will you walk with me?"

She assents, seeming to understand his need to keep moving, and offers no negative remark on his tension.

"Matron and Britta are both seeing to Lagbrotna," she reveals. "And no one's seen such a wound except Britta herself."

"I have never seen such an adversary as inflicted it before," Will answers, grateful to have a chance to speak through the mess of troubles in his mind, laying them out in as logical an order as he can find. Foremost, his concern for Hannibal. 

"Freda's description was chilling," Alannah agrees, "I'm not certain I would want a gift if the gods offered me one."

Will, in light of recent interference such gifts have caused in his life, cannot say he disagrees. He works his teeth over his lower lip, leaving a faint sting.

"It seems at times that we become the play pieces for their exchanges," Will says, thinking of the last whispered threats Randulf had made. "Perhaps a trade for the blessings given."

"Or perhaps the gifts only allow them to achieve their own ends," Alannah says, voicing the other side of the coin. "And what benefits we find in them are only a tribute to man's cleverness."

Will allows a chuckle - he supposes the truth is somewhere between - and thinking about it could challenge minds for years. It is part of his immediate problem.

"At times a burden," Will agrees, and then the urge to reach forward and feel the way out wakes in him. His mind is in such a flux he isn't certain he even could, but how he _wants_ to. 

"Will he be alright?" he asks Alannah, hoping to hear that they are at least optimistic.

"Too soon to know," she says, and they turn along the edge of camp, and Will can see the horses penned and grazing calmly. It reassures him, makes him feel his anxiety is a small thing in the world after all.

"If anyone has strong enough healing magic," she reassures him. "Well, you already know."

Will brushes his hand over his own stomach, as if in memory. Matron was a powerful völva, and he has little doubt about Britta's skill, given how much she respect she commands.

Will takes a deep breath, "the price is high."

Alannah listens, stopping next to him when his steps finally cease. Will hesitates, gathering his thoughts and glad of her patient listening.

"Can you pay it?" she prompts, and Will feels his mouth stretching into a grim line.

" _Only_ I can pay it," he says. It is a burden, but also a relief that the whole weight of it will fall into his hands.

"And is the result worth the cost?"

"Yes," Will breathes, "to me. Perhaps not - no, I _know_ Hannibal would not like it."

Alannah considers this for a moment, then tips her head in allowance that Will would know Hannibal's mind well enough to judge.

"Hannibal is unconscious," she says, after a long moment. "If you don't agree, he may not ever get a say. I'd say that puts the decision with you."

It's a relief to hear it, though Will feels guilty - only briefly - to purposefully discard Hannibal's opinion. Lingering on it won't do him or Hannibal any good.

"Then yes, if it's my decision. My priorities aren't his," Will admits.

Alannah doesn't judge him for it. Politely she doesn't ask - or perhaps she already knows - what the price is. She may serve as confidant to Margrit as well as guard.

"That's two," she says, with a faint smile that eases Will's nerves some.

"Two-?"

"You owe me," she reminds, and Will laughs. The tension eases, and he enjoys the moment where the pace slows after what feels like an endless rush to get where he is.

"I owe you," he agrees, "but what I can offer you, I'm not sure."

"I'll think of something," she says, and it does not sound dangerous. "Perhaps next time you visit our tribe, you'll bring us some beer?"

It seems a small favor, and Will thinks there is more implication to it - the promise of company and more conversation. It is an offer of friendship to which he is happy to agree. 

"That'll be a start," she says, "and it won't hurt if you do the cooking."

"Yes it will," he tells her apologetically. She laughs, giving him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. He is glad for her companionship, for her willingness to listen when he needed it. 

"Alright, you get an out on that, then," she agrees, turning back toward the camp and leaving him behind with a wave over her shoulder, leaving him to his fate with no further excuse to delay.

Will returns to Margrit's tent, running his hand over the picture of the rampaging boar, fingers lingering over the open and angry mouth. He is still not certain the guardian spirit suits Margrit, but it was hers to take.

Pushing aside the flap he lets himself in, finding Margrit waiting. A curl of smoke rises from her alter, laid out carefully in the center of the tent. Will can see the figures of the three Ardik fertility goddesses arrayed, depicted with heavy breasts and swollen bellies. They are accompanied by three eggs, three candles, and three burning, scented cones that release a spicy smell in wisps and curls.

"You'll do it?" she asks, without looking up. In the center of her altar is a pot of black soil, and she displays a handful of seeds to him.

"Was there much doubt?" he asks, seeing that she has hardly delayed in the start of her magic. Margrit looks up then, deep cold eyes and impassive features. She shakes her head - of course he had to agree. It was a harmonious trade, a life for a life.

"What do you need me to do?" he asks. She pats a place on the pillow next to her, where she is seated at the low table that houses her altar.

"I hope that question was only about the ritual," she says, wry, sending him a sidelong look that puts him at ease. She could - and would - lower her guard at least now that she was getting what she wanted. 

"Mostly about the ritual," Will confesses. He is not a fool, but he had never allowed his own defenses low enough for intimacy - had certainly never _wanted_ it, before Hannibal. He knows enough, having lived amongst so prolific a people as the Ardik, for the rest.

"Put your hand over the seeds," she says, and he joins fingers with her uncertainly until she takes the lead and presses their palms flat together with the broad, round seeds between. He can feel their outline against the heel of his palm.

"Think about the goal. Make a picture for the goddesses to see."

Will closes his eyes, feeling the seeds in his palm, feeling the warmth of their joined hands, and makes an image in his mind as she instructs. This magic is new to him, but he has seen enough in his life that he does not dare scoff. He thinks of a child - a _healthy_ child, curled sleeping.

It opens luminous blue eyes to blink at him, in sleepy waking, stirring fat, bunched fists before the baby's tiny mouth stretches wide in a yawn. Margrit's fingers tighten on his, and it is only that which keeps the thought from straying. Will is sunk deep enough in the strange currents of his own awareness to dive yet. To reach out and see if this can become reality - and if so, what results might come of it.

"Open your eyes," she commands, in her low voice. Will does, and together they plant the seeds in the dark earth, water them. Margrit stands, and in the dim afternoon light, barely yet penetrating the tent walls, they settle on the bed and drink a little together until Will's nerves ease.

He is certain in the passing hours that she is demanding her heir - that her thoughts and magic are focused beyond just the physical requirements - though these they do not neglect.

Will thinks, with no regret, of Hannibal - not in Margrit's place, he has more respect for her than that - but hale and whole. If he has any say in directing the magic, he uses it this way.

Time fades, though he knows from the changing light, from their pauses to drink and sleep in short bursts, that it passes.

At last, Will wakes alone, duty finished. Though he has slept, there is a bone-deep exhaustion in him. He is sore - in all his muscles, his arms, his thighs, the small of his back. There is a new long scratch dividing the skin over his sternum where Margrit had taken up the sharp trophy claw and claimed his blood - only a little.

He presses his fingertips over the itchy, still-knitting skin of his face to ease without scratching, and rolls achingly to his feet, stumbling out into the late afternoon sunlight with only a blanket wrapped around his hips. He feels a fright, dirty and disheveled, and yet he could not hide or pretend it hadn't happened. To waver or feel shame might make less of his payment, or imply that he found Britta's tribe a cause for personal disgrace. They have made a bargain, a bond. Will thinks, with some irony, that it was the sort of tie of allegiance between them that Hannibal wanted.

Will doubts, as he empties his bursting bladder and finds a horse trough to splash himself clean in before seeking Hannibal, that he will be thanked for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -verð, price  
> -My beta is still on a well-earned vacation, please be understanding of any basic errors.


	12. sút

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's still not conscious when they let Will in, but when he touches Hannibal's brow it isn't hot, and Britta shows him the bite - no longer swollen or pouring out infection, the remaining angry red color looking far less serious. It seems a vast improvement.
> 
> "Why did it affect him so differently?" Will asks, finding his fingers touching his own healing bites.

He's still not conscious when they let Will in, but when he touches Hannibal's brow it isn't hot, and Britta shows him the bite - no longer swollen or pouring out infection, the remaining angry red color looking far less serious. It seems a vast improvement.

"Why did it affect him so differently?" Will asks, finding his fingers touching his own healing bites.

Britta considers, glancing at Will's bite to be certain it does not require her attention. The skin is knit and pink, though shiny and threatening to scar here, too. Will is not going to soon forget Randulf - perhaps never. He needs only see his own reflection. 

"You said the creature fed its curse by eating human flesh?" she asks, thoughtful.

Will nods, keeping the details from his mind.

"Perhaps Hannibal's prior savagery caused the reaction," Britta says. "He certainly would have angered any god that favored the Imperium when he ate Iohannes' heart."

The thought is far from comforting - it was not the most savage act of that war. Will has seen what remained of the Surdik, has heard what devastation and horror had visited itself on the tribes that had been overrun.

Many horrors remained in the wake of even a war won. Will has not even had time to consider what differences the wrath of foreign gods might make.

"Will he recover fully?" Will asks, wondering if this curse had anything to do with the loss of Hannibal's gift.

"Are you having buyer's remorse?" Britta asks, enjoying her position of advantage. She gets up, dusting off her knees. "He'll recover. He already is. You know if we had not seen to him, he would already be dead."

Will trusts her certainty. Ha had not dared to look ahead, and clearly now Hannibal is at least getting no worse.

"Not remorse," Will says, though the landscape of his future has certainly grown stranger. "Just uncertainty."

Britta looks at him, and Will misses the understanding Hannibal seems to have. The need to speak about the knot in his mind is large enough that he clarifies. Hannibal is unlikely to be receptive to the topic for some long time - if ever.

"I never expected to be a father," Will confesses, tone low. He had, at times, considered it - as a younger man, certainly. It had always been a wistful and distant thought beyond his reach. When Hannibal had freed him, he had not so much as mourned the loss of some potential family before turning to accept - and welcome - Hannibal's advances.

It had slid safely and quickly into impossibility, and Will hasn't thought to miss it.

"You needn't consider yourself one, if that's what bothers you," Britta tells him, and he sees no judgment in her eyes. That surprises him, that she might have pity for his situation.

"I don't think I can simply walk away," Will says, and then amends, "I don't think I _want_ to."

Britta draws herself up straight, crossing her arms over her chest, listening. There is an interested light in her eyes, and Will sees the shadow of Hannibal's ability to lead in her again. They are a near match in some ways; hard but fair where fairness is needed, and demanding that others earn their respect without hesitating to give it once they have.

"Think all you like," Britta says. "But if - as we hope - it is a blue eyed child..."

She trails, so as not to seem to be in need, or to be compounding an already large demand.

"They'll need a tutor, yes," Will agrees. He feels inadequate to the task. His mother had, with the help of nearly every member of his tribe, taken on the burden of his teaching. He had lost it when he was still young, his tribe destroyed and he taken captive when he was only twelve. He has seen no other sign of survivors, unless they were well hidden amongst far flung Ardik tribes. He doubts there are any - there had been enough competition for the possession of Will and the attendant status it granted. 

It left the duty to him. He's not sure he's ready. Certainly not to groom a child for the leadership Britta and her tribe would be making a bid for.

"Seer," she says, her expression softening a little when his inner thoughts become clear.

"Will," he says, looking up. "My name is Will - we are more than our abilities."

A wry smile tugs her mouth to one side, "Lagbrotna would like us to forget that, when it serves his purpose."

Will drops his eyes away, looking down at Hannibal. "There are those here who should _not_ judge others for acting out of a sense of purpose."

Britta allows him the rebuke, though it is equally aimed at himself. She finds her original thread of thought and stitches it together.

"Will, you took the only course laid before you," she says, meaning it as a reassurance. "Your fate is still yours, now that it has begun to spread options before you again. Use your gift if it reassures you, but we won't _demand_ anything else - we will pay for services, just like you did."

She means, Will realizes, a real and solid alliance. Once Hannibal had commanded him to find a way to do this; Will has stumbled upon it now by accident.

Britta leaves him alone with Hannibal to consider her words and to satisfy himself as to Hannibal's bettering condition. Alone, he finds himself exhausted and aching. In a guilty way, he is grateful that Hannibal has not woken before Will could be there. His body is sore, and he wants little more than to settle in at Hannibal's side and sleep.

First, he washes Hannibal's face with cool water, feeling that his pulse is slow and steady, his temperature normal. He applies an herbal salve as Britta had instructed him, over the wound. Otherwise, he leaves it open to air. His other accumulated scratches seem to have faded, leaving shallow scabs and early scars. Will discards the old bandages there and washes the dried sweat and ash from his skin. He does his best with the long braid, undoing it and re-plaiting it, and at this Hannibal stirs a little.

His eyes are glassy still and unfocused when they blink open - just barely, a sleepy, unguarded gesture. He reaches up, the motion slow but steady, and curls his hand at the back of Will's neck, tenderly brushing his fingertips through Will's hair before pulling him down.

"Stop worrying," Hannibal says, so low Will feels it more than hears it with his ear pressed against Hannibal's chest, pinned in place by his gently restraining hand.

Will lets out a breath, and with it some of the winding tension of the last few days as Hannibal makes slow, lazy gestures over his shoulders. The temptation of comfort is too easy to relax into. Will sleeps deep. 

In his dreams, whiteness slowly resolves itself into snow, and between the silent, heavy, white flakes he slowly comes to perceive the forest. It is thin and leafless with winter, tall dark sketch lines in the blinding swirls of white. 

Behind him, a lonely sound - the rising howl of a wolf, but when he turns, Will can't find it. It comes again and again, seeking contact - desperate not to be the only voice in the storm. Will feels the desperation growing in it, fear and anger.

Every time he turns, the sound moves again, and this time he does not see the wolf.

Will wakes, unseasonably cold when Hannibal shifts beneath him, trying to disentangle their comfortably interlocked limbs. He can't stop the noise of protest as stiffness wakes in his limbs, leaving him reluctant to move or be moved.

Hannibal gives up trying to go without waking him when Will refuses to let go of his pants, holding tight to the loose fabric.

"We can't stay in bed forever," Hannibal says, and Will forces his stiff body into a stretch, groaning.

"Would you be willing to make a wager?" he mutters, but relief floods him to see Hannibal sitting up under his own power, his eyes clear and his voice dry but steady.

"Not with so full a bladder," Hannibal tells him. Then, looking around with slow realization he asks, "where are we?"

"You don't remember?" Will asks, rousing himself at last. "We had to bring you to Britta for your wound."

Hannibal looks at him skeptically, then hesitates, searching through his hazy memories. He lifts his arm to inspect it, brushing some of the poultice away and flexing his fingers, testing sensation and motion.

Will can see even the angry red color has faded, leaving only scabs dyed brown by the herbs. 

"I don't remember clearly," he confesses, and Will can see how admitting that weakness costs him, even in front of Will.

"How did you get Britta to agree?" Hannibal asks.

There it was, of course. Will knows he has to face the music, but he wants to feel like the ground is more solid under his feet - under _Hannibal's_ feet. He hesitates - a moment too long. Hannibal doesn't miss it.

"You'd better be ready to talk about it," Will says, "and I think that means we should eat first."

Hannibal sees the delay for what it is, but allows it, likely on the insistence of his urgent bladder. Will is glad of the reprieve, though he knows it can't last long.

"Let me clean up," Hannibal says, heading for the tent flap and pushing it aside. "You get food, and I'll meet you here again. Then we can talk."

Not long enough at all, though better Hannibal hear it from him than anyone else. Will finds Freda attending a stew pot, looking sullen, and begs a share by promising to tell her more when he can.

But when he returns to the borrowed tent, Hannibal isn't there, and he doesn't come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -sút, winter


	13. Suðri

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will waits patiently, then impatiently, then anxiously, uncertain what could be keeping Hannibal. He abandons the cold food in the borrowed tent - it is, he notices, emblazoned with a black, snarling wolf. Will doesn't know who it belongs to. Outside, everyone is going about their business, and Will is put faintly to ease by the seeming normality of it.
> 
> "Are you and Lagbrotna done catching up already?" Bávorr's voice is the one that pulls him from his thoughts, "or did some new fate pull him away in such a rush?"

Will waits patiently, then impatiently, then anxiously, uncertain what could be keeping Hannibal. He abandons the cold food in the borrowed tent - it is, he notices, emblazoned with a black, snarling wolf. Will doesn't know who it belongs to. Outside, everyone is going about their business, and Will is put faintly to ease by the seeming normality of it.

"Are you and Lagbrotna done catching up already?" Bávorr's voice is the one that pulls him from his thoughts, "or did some new fate pull him away in such a rush?"

"A rush?" Will asks, suddenly wondering if healing Hannibal's body could possibly have restored his powers - and if so, has that pulled him away so quickly?

It worries him. Hannibal was barely recovered - if he needed to fight for any reason, he would be at a marked disadvantage. Why would he leave Will? He would gladly have accompanied Hannibal, and found relief at the news that his gift was working.

"Sure," Bávǫrr says, tilting her head at his confusion. "I saw him and that slave that came with you - the quiet one - ride out of town with their horses and two others as if they were in great haste. In all honesty, I thought you had gone with them."

Will is shaken silent, uncertain of the appropriate reaction. Hannibal hadn't _told_ him that he felt a call from the gods, and Will is certain that by now, he would have. That leaving Will to worry while he rushed into danger, even if he thought it would be quick, was a thing of the past.

For only a moment, Will curses this life, uncertain and tempestuous. The brief reprieve they had earned after the war is now past, and Will has not missed the rush. 

"Which direction did they go?" Will asks.

"South," Bávǫrr tells him, eyes bright with curiosity. "into Surdia. You really didn't know, huh? I guess if I were you, I wouldn't have let him ride either."

"Where's Freda?" he asks, hoping she has gone with them, that her loyalty will hold long enough to keep Hannibal safe from the danger he would be facing. 

"I saw her with Britta just back that way," Bávǫrr says, helpfully dashing his hopes. Will takes a deep breath, to keep his senses together, trying not to let the rush of events smash into and wash over him.

He thanks her, at least, and she smiles her answer in a curious, sly way that suggests his confusion will not long remain a secret. He supposes thirst for gossip and unusual events must run as strong here as in Ro. This visit will have given them the fodder for - well, at least nine months.

"My pardons," Will interrupts, still not able to shake the anxiety he feels at breaking into a conversation, even though his status is no lesser. "Freda, do you know why Hannibal left-"

Her surprised expression answers Will's question without the need to finish it. He looks next to Britta, but finds only guarded interest.

"Last I knew he had only just woken up," Freda answered slowly. "My food's not _that_ bad."

"He's gone with Matthias," Will says.

"Well, I'm sorry," Freda answers, with no particular concern, "I haven't seen him, and if he didn't tell _you_ where or why he was going, I don't see why he would have told me."

"Come with me," Will orders, tired of her attitude, sick with worry that he now couldn't hold at bay.

Freda eyes him coolly. She is taller than him by a little, and her presence is bigger with her wild mane of bright curls and piercing blue gaze. He doesn't back down, unwilling to seem as if all his strength came from Hannibal.

He did not want to think that without his protection, Will was lost, that he might again become a target for greed and possession. He did not think Britta would make such an attempt, but Freda...

Will gives her little chance to gather her argument without obeying his command, turning on his heel for the horse paddock. 

"I need my saddle," he tells her when she follows - perhaps more out of outrage than any inclination to obey.

"It's in the tent," she tells him curtly. He alters his course to fetch it.

"What makes you so sure he left?" she asks, exasperated. "Maybe he just wanted to ride and make sure he still could."

Will shakes his head, "he went with Matthias."

"And?"

"I don't trust Matthias," Will says, flatly, gathering his saddle. "I only trust _you_ slightly more."

That seems to strike her speechless for a moment. He looks at her then, with his saddle and blanket in his hands, measuring her reaction. 

"I can look," he says, warning, "and _see_ if you were involved in this. I'm hoping you'll save me some time - since it may be very important - and tell me."

She looks at him, reading truth or depth of conviction in his words, or perhaps she is gently shocked that he would not trust her. Her mouth forms a full lipped moue of displeasure, before her expression forms into anger at the accusation.

"Are you saying you think he was stolen?" 

It seems a very dire thing to say, a weakness to admit that might harm Hannibal's status. He thinks, however, that he can trust the disbelief in her expression.

Will reaches quickly for a lie that comes too easily. "I think if he felt the pull of the gods to go that way, he would let himself be taken."

She eyes him doubtfully, eyes narrowing. Will tries not to waver under her gaze, needing her to help him, to at the very least listen.

"So what are you going to do about it?" she asks, after a long moment of quiet. Will lifts his saddle again and heads out of the tent.

"I'm going to go find him," Will says. "I need you to go back and tell Fredrik what happened. Have him send Ymir and Brunn."

Freda snorts. "What are _they_ going to do?"

Will lifts his saddle, resting it on the paddock fence while he looks for Rata's familiar shape in the herd.

"Help us, if we're lucky," Will says evenly. "Collect our bodies if we aren't."

"You really think he's in trouble and that _you_ can help him?" Freda says,a nd for the first time there's some sign of respect in her voice.

"I think if he's in trouble, I'm the only person he'll _let_ help him," Will says. He can't find Rata in the herd, so he whistles for her, sharp and piercing. "And, I think I don't trust anyone else to go in my stead. 

Freda doesn't argue with him there. Rata does not appear, and Will feels some minor irritation with the animal. He realizes, then that none of the animals in the pasture look familiar.

"Freda," he says, his heart sinking, "do you see your horse?"

"Well, of course, she's-" Freda begins, but then stalls. She cannot call Will's attention to her mount, either. Will remembers that Bávǫrr had made reference to them taking remounts, and he curses under his breath.

"She's not here," Freda concludes, sounding angry. She turns eyes bright with upset on Will, and he realizes she is waiting - and looking to _him_ \- for instruction.

"See if you can borrow-" he starts.

"You can take mine," a voice interrupts, coming from behind Will, pulling his attention around to Avigayil where she stands haunting and _present_ behind him. He's not sure how long she's been there.

When he turns, she offers him a grim smile, continuing wryly, "it seems fair."

"Avigayil," he starts, wanting to ask how she is doing here, why she had not seen him earlier, though she's under no obligation and he had been occupied. He discards these questions, they belong to a past that he probably attributes more importance to than she does. He lets them go. There is no time to renew acquaintances. 

"Thank you," he concludes. "Freda, tatke her horse and head back to Ro, send Ymir and Brunn please."

"What will you do?" she says, looking at his empty saddle, still hung over the paddock rail.

"Walk," he says impatiently. "Take my saddle back."

With nothing in his hands and nothing on his back but his stale tunic, Will turns south and trusts that Freda will do as instructed, hopes that through relentlessness, he can catch up to Hannibal, that he can track them. No one tries to call him back, and Will hopes that's not because his foolishness is so evident they expect he will soon have to acknowledge it.

When he hears distant hoofbeats, he does turn back, knowing it is a weakness - but sees that Freda is departing in the opposite direction - northwest toward Ro.

He strikes out alone, and by luck finds the signs of passage of four horses. He knows Rata's steps, her feet are big for her short strides and her front feet are turned out slightly. From this - and only this - he is certain he is on the right track.

Alone with his thoughts, the questions creep in. Where are they going? Why? How had Matthias gained enough of an advantage to take Hannibal against his will?

He won't know until he finds them, but it nags him, demanding his attention as he fights just to rush - he cannot catch up with horses by running, but he follows as quickly as he can. One foot in front of the other, and covering the tracks of the small herd of horses - galloping now and going hard, straight south. 

It brings to mind when they had run ahead of the Imperial army, thought that had been in the opposite direction. Could Matthias be making a break for the Empire?

Will doesn't like the thought. He curses his need to keep moving, to make haste and follow the tracks across the grasslands - he cannot reach into the future and keep moving forward unguided - he will lose the trail or be forced to stop.

The day wears on, and Will thinks longingly of the food he had left uneaten, wishing nonsensically that Hannibal had at least been kidnapped after their meal. The sound of hoofbeats hooks into his attention, and Will looks up, hoping to see, somehow, miraculously, the party he was chasing.

Instead, the sound comes from behind him, two dark horses coming at speed - he cannot possibly hope for Ymir and Brunn yet. Wary of a trap, of hostile pursuit, Will drops his hand to his dagger.

The approaching figure is helmeted, features masked by wide cheek flaps, and a thick ruff of fur at the brim. Two fierce bulls' horns curl forward from the crown, betraying the direction of the rider's attention - they are looking at Will, riding for him.

The rider stops out of range, one figure ponying a second horse. The animals are restless. The whistle reaches him on the wind, and carries relief. Bávǫrr.

Will lifts his hand in greeting, and she kicks her horse back into motion, while he waits for her. The animals, he notices, are burdened for a journey, and he hopes, gratefully, that it will not be a very long one.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Suðri; south


	14. fylgja

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Well I couldn't let you have all the fun," Bávǫrr tells him as he swings up onto the back of the horse she's brought him. The animal is taller than Will is used to, the lift to get himself into place is harder. He lets the irritation that Matthias took Rata pass quickly - it was hardly the only thing the Imperial had taken.

"Well I couldn't let you have all the fun," Bávǫrr tells him as he swings up onto the back of the horse she's brought him. The animal is taller than Will is used to, the lift to get himself into place is harder. He lets the irritation that Matthias took Rata pass quickly - it was hardly the only thing the Imperial had taken.

"It's not likely to be very fun," Will tells her, but Bávǫrr's smile only gets bigger, more fierce. 

"Then you have the wrong definition of fun," she says, brightly. She waits only for Will to get his seat before she kicks her horse into a trot. Will's horse jolts after, refusing to be left behind. He seizes after the reins to regain some control. 

"So this Matthias," Bávǫrr shouts, over the sounds of hooves and jingling harness. "What's his grudge?"

Will isn't sure, besides defeat and captivity. "You don't think slavery is enough?"

Bávǫrr snorts, eyeing Will. "The last two slaves of his seem to love him, so no. I think there's probably more to it than the usual 'my pride as a man' stuff."

Her tone dismisses it as a weakness or fallacy, as a foolish folly of men to be so bothered over pride. He wondered if that was an act of hers, given that she took company amongst woman who would not surrender their pride either. They made a point of it, in fact.

"Well," Will speculates. "he's headed due south."

"You don't think he'll just kill Lagbrotna and break for his freedom?"

The thought is a dark one, a bitter taste in his mouth. He thinks of Matthias' calculating eyes and deliberate attitude, and finds a misalignment.

"He has some other intent," Will says. "If he could, and found the chance, he would have killed Hannibal already."

Bávǫrr doesn't argue, but considers his words and then tips her head in agreement. Better to leave a danger behind dead than carry it near at hand. He had some other purpose for Hannibal, some other reason for taking him south. Will shifts his seat, trying to stabilize himself. 

"Bávǫrr," he says, catching her attention. He offers her his reins. "If you'll lead my horse, I may be able to give us better direction."

Interest lights up in her eyes and she reaches out to take them, eager. "You're gonna do it? Right here?"

"While we ride," Will agrees. "Unless I fall off."

He is aware of her eyes on him as he closes his own, and hopes she pays enough attention to the trail to keep them from losing it. When he reaches this time, it feels sluggish, enmired in the weight of his own thoughts. They rise up the instant he closes his eyes, all these sudden changes well up. Will pushes through the jungle of his worries and into the place of stillness, the lip of the still pool in his mind where a thousand threads run like currents through a raging sea. Yet, at the surface was a quiet that was intoxicating, that Will must allow himself to resonate with until he lost track of the horse below him, the world around him.

Only then could he reach beneath the surface, into the humming threads of fate and future. The one he seeks is familiar, though he is not sure if it will more relieve him if he cannot get hold of it than if he can.

Will's touch closes on the line, and it does not recede from him.  
-

The bonds are tight and harsh on Hannibal's wrists, looped around his chest to hold his hands at the small of his back with no room for play. It is wisely done, even though Hannibal is separated from his sword, from all of his weapons. 

Will had not thought to bring them, Hannibal suspects. He would have been too urgent, with his loyal heart, to get Hannibal to aid. He did not think - even with all his vision - of what opportunities were presented by leaving Hannibal unarmed and convalescent. 

The mistake will not be repeated.

Ahead of him, Matthias pushes his animal relentlessly - riding now Freda's horse, leading the three others. The head start would be small, unless a debate was made of who should be sent in pursuit.

It would be, if Will had his way, a very short debate. There was fire enough in him to convince the others or to go alone.

Hannibal's head aches, and there is a deep hunger in him, an old ache and stiffness only beginning to fade from his limbs. The sickness had sapped his strength and confused his mind, leaving him vulnerable after it had passed. Matthias, too clever, had taken advantage. 

Something, before the loss of Hannibal's gift, had told him to keep the man close. He would never, however, have chosen to bring him here. Will could not have acted differently - there were few to genuinely trust when opportunity for power presented itself. Ambition was a valued trait amongst the tribes, a healthy one, yet it might drive them apart.

He works on untying the pack behind his saddle. There's no hope for his wrists, but the ties for the carryall fall tantalizingly against his knuckles and so he worries them, feeling a little give now and again.

"Why south?" Hannibal challenges, when Matthias looks back, suspicious of his silence. He should be, but Hannibal does not want him to tie him even more severely.

Matthias' expression is hard, but pleased - he is proud of gaining the advantage. "Because no one will pay for you in the north."

They are going - madly - all the way back to the Imperium, then. The thought leaves a foul taste in Hannibal's mouth, the memory of his fights in the gladiator pits, of bare survival on bread that tasted of ash, of blood mixed in mare's milk. None would question where the blood came from, but no animal corpses ever passed by the cages where the fighters were held.

Only bodies, dragged off the sands.

"And what makes you so sure they'll pay for me in the Imperium?" Hannibal asks. "One man will not bring you a Triumph."

Matthias' cold, amused stare turns back to Hannibal, then. He has a bigger plan, a broader secret, and it is plain to see. Hannibal is only a part of his goal, and when Matthias sees that Hannibal cannot yet perceive the rest, his expression transforms to slow contempt. He is pleased with - and certain of - his superiority to Hannibal, then.

"They say you have a gift," Matthias says, without offering answer to Hannibal's question. He had the advantage, and did not have to. "That you can change your own fate and break the fate of others. To bad, isn't it, that your talent doesn't extend to chains or ropes, right?" 

Matthias grins nastily, playing a game of diversion, taunting Hannibal away from thinking too hard about his real purpose. "The Helenites think that blessings from the gods can be transferred. Maybe there's only one fatebreaker but think about what good that gift would do for the empire if I had it."

Matthias pauses, and then pulls his tiring horse up, finding Hannibal's mount - one from Ró, but unfamiliar - is nearly spent as well. When he drags Hannibal roughly down from the saddle, Hannibal drags the loosened pack with him. Matthias pays it no heed when it hits the ground.

"Do you think I could rip a gift out of someone?" Matthias speculates, half musing aloud. He pushes Hannibal toward Illrhundr roughly.

"Only if you ate them," Hannibal suggests mildly. He knows better than to reveal that he does not currently have any gift to steal, even as Matthias prods him warningly with a stolen dagger until he climbs awkwardly up onto Illrhundr's low back. The patchy horse is also breathing hard, his neck sweated, but he has been unburdened.

"So then you think," Matthias taunted, tying Hannibal's legs to the saddle this time, leaving him fixed and helpless should the horse stumble. He steps back and gestures at his own knife. "I could become Lagbrotna."

Hannibal doubts Matthias has the patience, but he says nothing. It seems to satisfy Matthias anyway.

He drives the two spent horses off in another direction, mercilessly whipping each of them with a long lash until they run blind, eyes rolling to show whites. Then, he swings up onto Rata's back - a spark of anger wakes in Hannibal at the casual possession of his first gift to Will. The mule seems impatient with him, displaying a temper and stubbornness that Hannibal has not seen in her before. She gallops when Matthias kicks her, and Hannibal knows they will ride through the night.

In the back of his mind, at the edges of his hearing, he thinks that somewhere a wolf is howling.

A thin, high wail that calls out lonely in the growing dark.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -fylgja; to follow


	15. lǫgr

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will finds himself again in the darkness, night having fallen while he reached for and rode with Hannibal, and it is with surprise that he finds himself someplace else again when Bávǫrr rouses him gently, calling his name to ask a question of him.
> 
> "Here the tracks divide," she tells him, and for some long minutes he can make no sense of the words. In the dark, the place does not look familiar, and then he recalls - Matthias. They are in pursuit of Matthias and Hannibal, and this is the parting he had seen - it feels like hours ago now.

Will finds himself again in the darkness, night having fallen while he reached for and rode with Hannibal, and it is with surprise that he finds himself someplace else again when Bávǫrr rouses him gently, calling his name to ask a question of him.

"Here the tracks divide," she tells him, and for some long minutes he can make no sense of the words. In the dark, the place does not look familiar, and then he recalls - Matthias. They are in pursuit of Matthias and Hannibal, and this is the parting he had seen - it feels like hours ago now. 

"He sent two of the horses off when they were spent," Will says, and the sound of his own voice surprises him, strange to his ears because it is not Hannibal's. He has never fallen so deeply into any fate that wasn't his own, and the time it takes him to come back agitates and concerns him. 

"Well that's foolish," Bávǫrr says. "To gain only half a day's advantage when he could have kept alternating..."

She turns to follow the more southern path and Will realizes it is the wrong way, turning his horse away toward the other. "They went this way."

"That way?" she asks, looking doubtful. "That's straight to the ocean."

"This is the way they went," Will says, confident of his sight and memory. "They may turn aside later or double back, but I saw Matthias choose this path." 

"Maybe he's a great swimmer," Bávǫrr muses, more to herself than to Will.

He had no explanation for her, save that Matthias had seemed sure of his course. Will does not know how he intends to cross all of Surdia with only what rations he could have gathered in a few moment's time. His actions seemed both well timed and extremely rash.

Will's horse stumbles and he looks down to find the pack Hannibal had discarded. He gets down quickly to recover it, though he does not know why it should be important. It seems light for such a bulky roll - more than blankets - and Will recognizes it as one he had packed in his frantic haste to get Hannibal to Britta. He had left it to Matthias to lead the horses, and it seemed he had not missed a chance for supplies.

"What is it?" Bávǫrr asks.

"Blankets from home," Will says, clawing at the straps holding the roll together, shaking the blanket out to unroll it, "-and-"

He pulls the wolf-eared cloak, black and shining, brushed to perfection - or as near as it would be since its many prior adventures. Will feels relief to see its fierce and familiar visage, comforted. He strokes his fingers over the ears and leaves the blankets behind to keep only the cloak.

They are unlikely to see any rest soon enough to avail themselves of such. Bávǫrr doesn't comment, but she looks amused by his actions. Not that she finds them silly, perhaps, but she is curious - about him in general, Will realizes. But her curiosity does not come with a covetousness or a fear.

"So how does it work?" she asks, unashamed of her own curiosity as he swings back up onto his borrowed mount; the horse is black, taller than he's used to and testy. Will has come, through borrowed mounts, to appreciate his gift - his talent in matching Rata's temperament to his own as he had learned to ride. 

"It's not easy to explain," Will says, as they turn to follow the tracks again. The night has come on, but the moon is nearing full and bright to their luck, and they can still follow the trail if they go slowly.

"Well," Bávǫrr says, gesturing around them - there is nothing to see but night and grass and distant trees, and they have nothing to do but ride, keep company, and try to stay awake. "You have time to get it right."

"No offense," Will starts, feeling tired already, "but I'm not obligated to explain myself anymore."

"And I wasn't obligated to bring you a horse so you weren't trying to catch up on Shanks' mare to a man who thought to bring extra - and probably _food_ ," Bávǫrr reminds, taking no offense but also dismissing his protest. 

Fair enough.

"It's like there's still a place in my mind," Will says, thinking of when Hannibal had asked much the same question. "Sitting just beneath the current of my thoughts. A still, dark well with a stream running over it. Only when the stream is very clear, I can see down into the well."

"Sounds...wet." Bávǫrr muses. Will does not argue - there is no way to explain the sensation to someone who has not - and will not - ever feel it. 

"It clings to you like that," Will agrees. "It will pull you in and under if you don't take care."

"So what happens if you do get pulled in?" she asks, and Will realizes she is as interested in catastrophe - if it might mean excitement - as success.

"My mother said-" Will begins, and then hesitates. The memory grows older, the sound of her words fainter every time he reaches for it. "She said a Seer lost to the future could no longer exist now. They lost themselves and left an empty shell. The body dies. No one is sure if some other part of them might survive.

"It's why you shouldn't reach into your own future," he concludes. "Only others’."

"And then what's it like?" she asks, undeterred by his grim words.

"Like stepping into what someone _will_ be, for a little while. Seeing what they will see and hearing what they will, feeling it all," he confesses. "For a time you may become someone else, but you have to remember who you are."

"And if you don't, you get lost?" she asks. 

Will nods.

"Have _you_ ever been lost?" she presses.

"No," Will says, "some times are closer than others, but I have never been lost."

To him, it's clear - he has always returned. He is still alive. For that, it's evident he has never been lost - even if at times he has nearly forgotten himself - as he had this afternoon. He doesn't reveal that, unwilling to cause worry when he has no intent to stop reaching forward. Not while Hannibal is at risk, no matter how dangerous.

He will just be careful.

"So you get to slip in and see what other people think of you?" Bávǫrr asks, her question enthusiastic and uncommon. Will has never thought of it that way. 

"Only if they happen to be thinking of me at the point in the future I reach into," Will says, though he had, at times, reached carefully to be sure a warlord would not hurt him - or molest him, honestly. More commonly when he was younger. "It's rare that I find someone preoccupied with me in what I'm looking at."

Bávǫrr shrugs agreeably in the dark. She gives him the benefit of the doubt, of knowing what he's experienced. Night insects continue to sing around them while she digests the information she has gotten. 

"What about you?" Will asks.

She gives him a sly look, suggesting she is considering being difficult, making him ask a more deliberate and difficult question. He answers her look with a bland expression of his own, too tired to play more elaborate games.

"How did you come to be in Britta's tribe?" he clarifies.

"Oh, that," she says.

Will thinks it's likely to be a story worthy of more of an assessment than that. She gathers her thoughts on it, and Will waits patiently, watching the tracks of Rata and Illrhundr disappear beneath his own horse's hooves. 

"In the East, where I'm from, we're very much the same," she reveals. "Horses, warfare, tribes - though ours get along better."

She sounds a little smug about it, and her smile is toothy and cocksure. "It's just the culture that's a little different."

She briefly describes it for him - a nomadic people who valued honor, who were artful and made both poetry and war in the same breath. For a time, she talks about her childhood, and how early she had been put onto a horse, taught to shoot a bow, how to combine the two in deadly accuracy that is legendary amongst the non-nomadic eastern tribes.

Will is charmed quiet, listening to tales of a world that seems as impossibly distant as the Imperium that they might well be riding toward now. He finds it a wonder, now that his world is free and expanded - if he intends to remain at Hannibal's side, who knows where they might be drawn.

"But," Will says, when she finishes on a yawn, after telling about her first war party, where she'd earned her name. "How did you get here?"

"I followed you when Avigayil said you were going walking after your lover and his kidnapper," she says, somewhere between deflection and teasing.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -lǫgr, meaning water. I couldn't find one for Ocean!  
> -This chapter marks the return of my beta, Quedarius (archiveofourown.org/users/Quedarius/pseuds/Quedarius) who always asks the important questions


	16. svima

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal is nearly asleep in the saddle, starving and aching in a persistent way that keeps him awake through his exhaustion. Though he is tied to the saddle, every time rest starts to ease near, some motion or change pulls the restraints against his numb legs, yanking his sore arms and shoulders. He does not bet on any forthcoming relief. His thoughts feel dim and distant in comparison to the hollow in his belly and the dryness in his mouth.

Hannibal is nearly asleep in the saddle, starving and aching in a persistent way that keeps him awake through his exhaustion. Though he is tied to the saddle, every time rest starts to ease near, some motion or change pulls the restraints against his numb legs, yanking his sore arms and shoulders. He does not bet on any forthcoming relief. His thoughts feel dim and distant in comparison to the hollow in his belly and the dryness in his mouth.

Matthias leads on, seemingly tireless on Rata's back. They have slowed to a walk to spare the horses, but show no signs of stopping or changing their bearings. They will reach the ocean tomorrow - though whether the cliffs or the beach, Hannibal isn't sure.

"Are we going to swim to the Imperium?" Hannibal asks, swallowing to wet his mouth. 

"You've swum across this inlet before," Matthias answers, not looking back. He is navigating mostly by the stars, Hannibal thinks. "It made General Iohannes _very_ angry."

Matthias rolls his shoulders in an uncaring shrug, turning a conspiratorial grin back toward Hannibal. "I thought it was clever, until we had to chase you all the way to that walled city of yours. Double-time march."

Hannibal does not feel so much as an ounce of pity. Even if Matthias had entered the Imperial army against his will, he would have known the possible consequences. Here he is, at his first and best opportunity for escape, running straight back to the Empire. He had not joined by coercion.

"Should have known better than to get greedy," Hannibal answers. "The Imperium already has more land than it can hold, more slaves than citizens."

"If we have hold of all the neighboring lands," Matthias says, "we won't have need to defend any of it from, well - _encroachment_."

He pauses. Hannibal stays quiet, letting him continue on his own momentum. If Matthias doesn't feel as if he's being led, he may go further in revealing where they are going. He's smart, but also has a surplus of pride that he's been nursing for the year Hannibal kept him as a slave.

"You can blame the Surdik for their constant raiding against our northern territories," Matthias says - that information is new to Hannibal. He had known they occasionally raided outside their territories, but not beyond their Surdik neighbors - or at least not often enough to provoke the response they had garnered.

"I was unaware of their actions," Hannibal says.

Matthias laughs, deeply amused by Hannibal admitting a lack of knowledge. "Well, I'm sure you were pursuing your own agenda."

Hannibal holds his scathing remark, knowing better than to antagonize his captor yet, not restrained so tightly and while Matthias is holding a grudge. He has a year of perceived mistreatment to get revenge for.

"As they were serving theirs, yes."

"Tell me," Matthias asks, tone changing to something nastier, gloating and lofty with superiority. Hannibal wishes he had listened to the drive to keep Matthias near by burying his body behind the longhouse. There must be some reason that he was sent in this direction, some reason he now sat on a horse headed back to the very place he had waited so long to be free of. The gods, he thought, must be working even if he did not feel the pull.

Or, perhaps Hannibal was no longer useful to them and his current fate was in his own hands and no other.

Well, he allowed, perhaps Will. His gift, inborn, would not fail him. If all others fell to fighting over the hole he left in the power structure, Will would come after him. He could not see Hannibal's fate, but he could chase Matthias, who had done very little to cover their tracks, and would soon trap them against the ocean. Hannibal would refuse to swim.

"Tell me how you intended to lead all of these squabbling rabble," Matthias asks. "Without first conquering them?"

"I don't need to," Hannibal says. "We conquered _you_ , and any attempt to return by Imperial forces will not find us unprepared."

Matthias laughs, turning his attention back to the path ahead. He doesn't seem convinced. Hannibal does not need him to be - the Imperials thought the Surdik and Ardik tribes had no pride, no culture, that they were so consumed with infighting that they could not be a threat. In reality, the politics of the Imperium are just as brutal, just as ready to fold against themselves until the fire burned them from the inside out.

Suddenly, it's exhausting being faced with untangling so much. For the first time, he faces the notion with no clear path and no conviction he will come out on top. Nothing guides him but the horse beneath him, dragging his feet in exhaustion and yet led on by the rope attached to his halter. Hannibal finds that he had treasured this year, while the tribes had recovered.

He had watched Will get stronger while cradled in furs on Hannibal's bed after the battle, surviving the dagger strike meant for Hannibal, and for a time it had seemed a marvel. Will had been a slave - as Hannibal had - for long enough to mark him, had managed to make a place in a society that had not done the same for his people, and had done it on his own terms and in his own time. Yet, what Hannibal thinks of first is not his strength or the value of his gift or the sharpness of Will's mind - all virtues.

Instead, he thinks of the one person he trusts, with a paralleled and opposite history, a different gift. He thinks of the early mornings, in low light, when Will wakes slowly next to him and his blue eyes first glow through his long, dark eyelashes; a rising moon that was lit from within. 

That mattered more to him than any victory or crown, Hannibal knows. He had never gone to steal from Einar's tribe with any inclination of what he would be getting. He had known, of course, what Will's powers were, that he was a seer, and that such would greatly benefit him. He hadn't known - how could he - that Will's eyes would draw him in like a fish on a line; that his low, bitter voice would ease into Hannibal's dreams and wake him at night. He hadn't known how they would call out to each other.

It might have stopped him, then, this notion that he might settle for contentedness over the conquest that has been his goal in building himself up from a bandit lord, in building Ró up from nowhere and nothing. But the _pull_ had been there, nearly irresistible, so he had gone. 

For a time, they just ride. Hannibal's mind drifts lost and quiet, occupied with his numerous aches and hurts, with keeping his balance when Illrhundr stumbles. He becomes aware that the sun illuminates one side of his face, that he may still be sweating out the last of his fever when the heat seems overwhelming and sweat springs up on the back of his neck. The sound of the ocean wakes in his senses, the smell of salt and wet sand, and he realizes how close they've gotten.

The air gets cooler and the scent of water - even salt water - causes their mounts to prick up their ears and step with slightly more liveliness. They are as thirsty as Hannibal is, and the sound of the water only makes his mouth feel drier, compels him as a driving need. If the horses risk a drink of saltwater, Hannibal might find himself crouching alongside.

Then, he sees what their destination is - and Hannibal's heart sinks, even while his respect wakes for the well devised plan. At the shoreline, an Imperial warship bobs on the waves, oars drawn in. There are eyes painted on the prow of the ship, winking up and down over the waves. Red paint and yellow paint call attention to the clean lines, the trim shape and numerous oar holes promising speed. The red and white sail is furled, waiting.

"You didn't expect that, huh?" Matthias asks, kicking Rata back to a trot. The long trip is telling on him at last, dark circles beneath his eyes. "See, it turns out that when you kidnap and enslave the son of the third consul, a rescue is imminent."

Hannibal has to chuckle even as he looks back over his shoulder, hoping to see pursuit. Not enough time had passed for them to catch up, and now what time they had would not matter - Hannibal and Matthias would take their rest sailing, and Will would have to stop before he collapsed. 

"You never said," Hannibal murmurs.

"Someone who is worth a ransom," Matthias speculates, "usually doesn't advertise. Besides, I had an opportunity. Not only for _you_ , but the Seer will follow us right into Imperial captivity."

He kicks Rata into a gallop, striking her with his lash until she stumbles forward and drags Illrhundr after in one last surge - right down to the shoreline and up the ramp onto the deck, even as Hannibal fights his bonds in earnest.

Behind them, on the cliffs, a dark shape lurks looking down at the exhausted horses with hope. Matthias cuts Hannibal free and looses them, driving them back down onto the beach while the predators watch from above.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -svima, swim


	17. yla

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a time after he withdraws from Hannibal's fate, Will floats between, uncertain of himself. He cannot feel the world around him, only the foggy blackness of his mind. It feels weightless and quiet, and Will thinks of the time he and Hannibal had floated with the current, of the last time he had been near death. That thought wakes him from his total loss of self into a dream - a dark wolf standing at the shoreline and watching the tide silently.

For a time after he withdraws from Hannibal's fate, Will floats between, uncertain of himself. He cannot feel the world around him, only the foggy blackness of his mind. It feels weightless and quiet, and Will thinks of the time he and Hannibal had floated with the current, of the last time he had been near death. That thought wakes him from his total loss of self into a dream - a dark wolf standing at the shoreline and watching the tide silently.

The howling comes from across the sea this time instead, waking a need and a desire to follow in Will's heart, to throw himself into the waves and fight against the current or to throw his head back and howl his answer. 

Instead, he wakes up to the rocking, tired gait of his horse, to the quiet and distant sound of the ocean and the sun high overhead. It's well past mid-day, and the light seems blinding when Will opens his eyes, briefly dizzy. He has never reached for so long into the fate of another, and afterwards his head spins, limbs shaking and mouth dry.

 

Bávǫrr watches him curiously as he gasps painfully for air - he feels sore and aching as if he had been beaten instead of just Seeing.   
"You alright? I actually thought you were just asleep," she says, watching him carefully. He pulls his horse to a stop.

"We can't catch them," he says, and feels unwell to admit it, sick in general. With sudden, rising nausea, Will slides out of his saddle and finds he almost can't support himself. He eases down into the tall, coarse grass to press his head against the warm ground, so that the world seems to finally stop spinning around him.

"Well," she answers, looking down at him, "they have to stop to rest sometime, and they only have the two horses now."

Will shakes his head, feeling the rough sea grass brush against his cheek. "They got on a boat this morning."

She eyes him skeptically, then, looking up at the clouds and sky overhead. "Aren't you supposed to see the _future_?

Will groans. "I don't know where to reach, and Hannibal's future is different. I couldn't see anything about him at all before. Something about-"

His stomach gives a heave. Nothing comes, but his mouth is too dry to continue. "Please, pass me some water."

"Sure," Bávǫrr says, untying her canteen from her saddle. "You're sure you didn't see something that's going to happen tomorrow?"

Will drinks before he answers, thirsty as he remembered Hannibal being, when he'd heard the ocean. The water impacts his middle like a kick, and it feels freezing cold, enough to make him shiver and sweat unexpectedly. When he finishes, his limbs are still shaking.

"Did we follow their trail the whole time?" Will asks. "Unless we somehow got ahead of them, I don't see how they could reach the ocean after we did."

"Yeah, we're still on their trail. It's a little harder to follow on the cliffs, but they went more or less straight."

"How far is the shore?" Will asks, lifting himself slowly up to his feet again. He passes the canteen back to Bávǫrr and she ties it to her saddle horn. The water seems to calm his thirst and cool some of the sick feeling.

"Over that rise," Bávǫrr tells him, gesturing to a point where the horizon seems to end abruptly, dropping away from the grassy, gray-green plain and down to the shoreline.

Will whistles sharply, and Bávǫrr eyes him strangely, trying to determine his reasoning. Away east, he can see a strip of woods, and west is the water. He vaguely remembers this country. To continue south, toward Imperium, they would either have to go north around the ocean inlet, or cross the water. In a boat, the Imperials have a marked advantage.

"It's not that impressive," Bávǫrr tells him blandly, interpreting his whistle as a sign of reaction rather than the signal it was.

"No," Will agrees. "Though Hannibal and I came across it once - the current was on our side, I think. I was calling to see if Rata would come."

Sure enough, from the tree line her familiar gangly and long-eared figure appears. She has lost her saddle but not the bridle, and behind her trails the shorter, spotted form of Illrhundr. Bávǫrr looks impressed. 

"Okay, so, they're on a boat heading for the Imperium," she says. "No chance of catching them before they get there, we'll have to go around the inlet."

Will nods, not sure quite yet what to do - what might be his best plan of action, if indeed he had any viable plan left to him. 

"What are you going to do?" she asks, and he shakes his head. He isn't sure. "Well, then, I'm gonna set up camp. You have two warriors coming after us anyway, right?"

Will isn't quite sure he'd call them 'warriors', though they can fight. "Freda is supposed to send Ymir and Brunn."

"Might as well wait here, then. Maybe they'll bring a boat." She swings down off her horse and unties the roll slung behind her saddle to begin setting up. "We should eat and then sleep a while, it'll be easier to make a plan when you've slept - and I mean really slept."

Will doesn't dare try Seeing again until he's at least had something to eat. A yawn splits his lips, even as he reaches up to welcome Rata back, making soft noises as he pats her soft nose, checking her for signs of injury. Sweat is dried on her neck and smells sour. Will thinks she still feels hot, but she is whole and breathing easy.

Illrhundr seems unconcerned with his poking and prodding, more interested in the sea grass and consuming as much of it as he can without straying too far from Rata's side. 

"I think you're right," he tells Bávǫrr, once he's pulled off Illrhundr's saddle and both the animal's bridles. He turns to find that she's already tended the other two animals, who eat contentedly out of nosebags. "I'm starving and at a loss."

He doesn't like to admit it, but Bávǫrr has proven an able and understanding listener who does not treat him as if he were untouchable magic, just as if he were another man with a curious trick he could do. Irreverently. His first impression - that he liked her - is reinforced by the time he's spent with her. It's a novel thing, for Will, to have a friend.

"Well," she says, as Will helps her clear a space for a campfire, carefully pulling up the thick grass in a wide radius so there will be no chance of the fire spreading. "The way I see it, it comes down to two sets of two options."

"Oh yes?" Will asks, as Rata yanks the handful of grass he'd just pulled out of his fist. "What options do you see?"

"You can either go after him or give him up, first of all. For whatever reason. Lagbrotna's past is no real secret, he survived and escaped Imperium once. That's a pretty big advantage to doing it a second time. Or, maybe, you're ready for a new tribe - pretty sure Britta would welcome you in, and _also_ pretty sure you could take your pick of Imperial captives all for your very own."

"I'm going after him," Will asserts, though he knows she means well and would not judge him harshly for either choice. It's no choice, for him.

"Well, that's the first set of options decided then," she agrees, moving on quickly without trying to change his mind. "So next you have to decide your plan - charge in as fast as possible and hope to hit them before they're ready for you or take your time and do it the smart way, risking that something might happen to him in the meantime."

Will remembers Matthias' words with a worried shudder. It might happen that he tried to take Hannibal's gift - though what he would get with it currently not functioning even for _Hannibal_ was uncertain - before they even got to the Imperium. And, if the stories are right, it is a very big country. There are many cities in Imperium, over the vast sum of their conquered lands. Which in particular they would head for, Will doesn’t yet know. It means he will have to keep looking into the future, and then - well, even if he knew the name of the place they were heading, there is no way to know how to get there overland.

"I'm not even sure what part of the Imperium they're headed for," Will admits. "Are you familiar with their territory?"

She snorts. Will takes that to mean she isn't.

"So we'll have to do it the second way," Will says, she nods like that means they're settled. Will doesn't quite think that only determination will carry him through. "We'll need a guide."

Bávǫrr grins like she's been waiting for him to figure out this point, and then she leans in. "I think I know just the person."

Will finds his curiosity piqued by the wicked grin forming on her features, even has he follows her down to the shoreline to help gather driftwood for the fire.

"The only thing is," she says, as they gather together a few small sticks for kindling and a massive log it takes both of them to carry back up to camp. Will notices that Rata stays close, as if keeping an eye on him, or hoping he won't get into any more trouble.

"We'll have to steal him," Bávǫrr finishes, with a pleasured grin, dusting salty sand from her hands as if in anticipation.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -yla, 'howl'  
> -this chapter beta read by the most amazing Quedarius~
> 
> -Okay this is both late and not a two chapter update, and for that you have my apologies. I have not yet managed to satisfy myself with chapter 18, which introduces a couple of new characters and takes the story out of act 1 into act 2. It's written, but I feel like I have been in a rush to try and finish it and I'm not pleased with the result. So, you guys have my apologies, but I promise the delay is so that I can bring you a more satisfying chapter 18. The next update will be a little late also, since I'll be out of town. I'm gonna take some time to reassess and to give myself a strong outline, and also to hopefully get the last few chapters of Aleph solidified so I can narrow my focus to this fic for a bit afterward. If I can at all manage, I'll bring you a 3 chapter update on the 20th (a monday), if not I'll at least get you the rewritten chapter 18 by then. 
> 
> Thanks so much for your patience guys and my apologies for the delay. It's just hecka busy!


	18. Trireme

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nearly two hundred rowers pull the boat stroke by stroke, at an outrageous clip. Matthias had shoved Hannibal below decks after a brief discussion with the boat's captain, giving Hannibal an extra push down the stairs to make him stumble, off-guard, over the rough planking. Below, it is crowded and hot, smelling like bodies, exertion, and damp.

Nearly two hundred rowers pull the boat stroke by stroke, at an outrageous clip. Matthias had shoved Hannibal below decks after a brief discussion with the boat's captain, giving Hannibal an extra push down the stairs to make him stumble, off-guard, over the rough planking. Below, it is crowded and hot, smelling like bodies, exertion, and damp.

On three tiers of seating are a highly trained set of Imperial sailors, each swinging their oars in time tirelessly. No one needs to call rhythm, the rowers seem locked into it, like a heartbeat or breathing. Matthias pushes Hannibal along the narrow aisle at the center of the ship, past the pulsing muscles and heaving lungs that drive them forward.

Hannibal has never been in a trireme before - but the space below decks is too cramped for a long voyage, and he does not think the rowers will be able to pull them along so fast with no rest.

Every so often a call drifts down from the men working the rigging above, and the rowers make some well -practiced adjustments, changing directions. 

"Where are we going?" Hannibal asks, and Matthias gives him another shove toward the nose of the ship. The bow juts out beyond the banks of rowers, providing a small space to stand - and privy pots, Hannibal notices. 

"Why would I tell you that when I have every reason to suspect your Seer could be listening - if that's how that works," Matthias says. "It doesn't matter, _Hannibal_ , you're coming with us."

He opens a trap door into the lowest deck of the trireme, a pitch-smelling space that is near totally dark. There is a faint animal smell, like wet feathers and hay. The space - when Hannibal descends crouching into it - is not tall enough to stand upright in. In the center, the two mast beams plunge all the way through the ship to terminate here, held straight and steady, making them difficult to rip free in stormy weather.

To the main mast, an impenetrable and thick oak beam that must once have been a very impressive tree, Hannibal's chains are affixed, waiting open for him.

"Here we are," Matthias says, pushing Hannibal toward the beam.

Hannibal plants his feet and refuses, a low, wary hatred of the chains and what they represented coiling in his gut. The ties - still leaving splinters and rubbing his skin raw - were already bad enough. He does not want to subject himself again to chains, to being anchored to an immovable object.

He has no illusions what would become of him if the boat began to sink.

"Do you really want to do this the hard way?" Matthias asks, giving Hannibal a forceful shove that he resists. 

"I won't give you the satisfaction of the easy way," Hannibal snarls, ducking first to one side, then the other, to avoid Matthias' grab. His balance is off with his hands secured behind his back, and after a brief scuffle, Matthias gets ahold of the ropes and twists them together, calling for backup. It takes five men - but it does not take them very long, even with Hannibal biting and writhing, to secure him into his chains.

He pays for his resistance with bruises and a long scrape on one ankle where the metal bites skin over his old scar. The chains are heavy and short, securely bolted to the mast via heavy forged iron plates, and locked onto his wrists and hammered closed too tightly for him to think of slipping them. Hannibal pulls at them anyway for a time, but succeeds only in tiring himself.

The hatch closes, shutting Hannibal into darkness. He settles back against the mast, breathing the stale air and feeling blinded. For all of Matthias' threats, he must not have any solid idea how to extract Hannibal's gift, and he doesn't want to risk killing Hannibal outright. The only way to negate the shame of defeat was to offer Hannibal as a trophy.

Hannibal has survived Imperium once, as a gladiator. He doubts the same fate awaits him on return. He has been shut where he cannot see their path or destination, he thinks as a precaution against Will. He'll watch and wait, they cannot keep to the open ocean in the trireme - there is no place for the crew to sleep, and even with the hull loaded with supplies, it wasn't likely to feed them all the way back to the capital city.

Settling back against the smooth wood of the mast, Hannibal folds his chained hands over his still-empty belly and closes his eyes. He has never had to reach inward for his gift, but he has nothing now but time and hunger to occupy him. If Will could access his sight by reaching inwards, perhaps Hannibal's is locked away by distraction.

He reaches back in his memory toward when he had first felt the pull, after being sold away from his family in the Imperium. He had never seen his mother or father again, captured before he had been born and therefore he had come owned into the world. His sister, too - this memory, Hannibal shies from. He remembers her bright, dark, young eyes.

Hannibal chooses not to remember where the first pull - tugging him away from his chores - had led him. For an instant, he remembers flies, he remembers the image of a child's teeth scattered out, and then he turns his thoughts away. The feeling, then, had been like it had always been. A clenching, tight pulling sensation in his chest. It could be broad, pulling him to make wide, long gestures - or, as he had discovered in the gladiatorial pits, minute and delicate.

Guiding him to ride for miles, or to take a single step to the side. It had been with him since that moment - until after the war. He had felt no need for a pull then, considering his task over. Instead, he has stayed at Will's side and they have recovered together. In the endless deliberations and decisions that had seemed to follow, Hannibal had followed his own heart.

Perhaps his disregard - the fact that he has stopped listening without even realizing it - has angered the gods. He doesn't know if he should feel sorry. Hannibal had never _asked_ to be their playing piece, even if he has found it convenient.

Or, for a time - perhaps a very long time - they have simply found some other way to break fate. Some other piece with fewer entanglements. 

The trap door swings open, interrupting Hannibal's thoughts. He realizes the rowing has stopped. When the panel falls flat against the decking above, the brilliant sun's rays lance into the darkness and blind him - his eyes now thoroughly adjusted to the lightless interior of the hold.

The smell of food - even the greasy Imperial rations and the dusty dry scent of the hard, un-chewable bread - wakes Hannibal's body to ravening hunger.

"It's going to be a long trip," Matthias taunts - they have been rowing or sailing for nearly an entire day. "Eat up."

The bowl he drops, sloshing, at Hannibal's feet is filled with fat and scraps of meat and root vegetables. He lets a single biscuit fall from his fingers into it with a satisfying and sickening plop. To Hannibal, it looks irresistible.

"Water," he requests desperately, when Matthias turns away and seems content to leave him.

"Water, _what_?" Matthias pauses, at the bottom of the ladder up to the deck expectantly making clear his threat to ignore the request if Hannibal's answer does not satisfy him.

He doesn't know what Matthias expects. The thought runs slow through Hannibal's mind to completion. Matthias wants deference, and Hannibal's every instinct is to resist. To spit and growl and throw the food at Matthias' back. It will not fill his belly or quench his thirst. It will not give him the strength he needs to survive this ordeal.

Drawing his lips back in a snarl, Hannibal becomes aware of a presence - subtle and small, a feather light pressure that holds him back from action.

Matthias is still waiting.

"Water, please," Hannibal says, very carefully. He adds in the Imperial tongue, "Master."

He can tell this last pleases Matthias, soothing the injuries his own pride has endured in this last year. From one of the barrels arrayed in the bow of the ship, he draws up a small wooden cup of water. He sets it next to the bowl with his attention sharply on Hannibal for any signs of a lunge.

The motion of the ship spills a few precious drops, but Hannibal keeps still. He knows that to reach early will cost him both food and water. He pays the price for the meal with his pride, as the gods seem to have asked, and does not move until Matthias has gone up the ladder.

Quickly, before the door closes out the rest of the light, Hannibal seizes the bowl and cup before he must grope for them in the dark. 

The water tastes sweet even if it is dull and old, woody from too long in the barrel. The food is salty and slimy on his tongue, but to Hannibal it is good enough. He eats the entire bowl, and mops the remains out of it with the hard bread, chewing slowly on it to keep the feelings of hunger at bay until the next decide to feed him.

What keeps him going more than the nourishment the food supplies, is the ghost of guidance that's finally seemed to stir over in him again, telling him to stay his course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -a much belated and restructured 18, my apologies!  
> -At this point in the story I am breaking from naming the chapters in Viking vocabulary - Hannibal is firmly on his way to Imperium and therefore the chapters dealing with him will be titled in Latin  
> -Thus, Trireme - A ship with three tiers of oars propelled by sails and rowing.  
> -Beta Read by the amazing [Quedarius](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Quedarius/pseuds/Quedarius), who never lost her gift!


	19. kaupmaðr

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Who are we stealing from?" Will asks, as they ride - as stealthily as they can manage through the tall grass sea he had passed through with Hannibal so long ago. They have come far north now, into the heart of Ardik territory.
> 
> "You wouldn't know him," Bávǫrr says breezily, her tone hushed but playful.

"Who are we stealing from?" Will asks, as they ride - as stealthily as they can manage through the tall grass sea he had passed through with Hannibal so long ago. They have come far north now, into the heart of Ardik territory.

"You wouldn't know him," Bávǫrr says breezily, her tone hushed but playful. 

Will's heart sinks. He doesn't need his Sight to know. They had rested the previous day before riding into this familiar territory, nearly swimming now through grass that just brushes past the horse's knees. It will grow some foot more before fall. Char crackles under the horse's hooves and Will wonders how long ago the fire had spread. Had the Imperials burned it? It seems wasteful and dangerous to burn along their avenue of retreat, but he made no claim to truly understanding them. How could they so wholeheartedly belong to something so much larger than themselves that they seemed to vanish into it?

"Einar's tribe," Will says with certainty.

" _Calder's_ tribe," she corrects. "Since Einar's offspring are too young yet and - well, a thinner lot now. Imperium marched right over them. It won't be an issue."

"So how do you know they have a guide that will - or is willing to - help us?" he asks.

She smiles mysteriously and makes a shushing motion at him. They ride quietly, leading the spare horses behind them. Will has returned to Rata, and he's grateful to have her steady presence beneath him, predictable. She reminds him of Hannibal - rather, of his time spent with Hannibal. Of Kanin, too, with her dark coat. When she drops her head to steal and eat a handful of pea pods off of their vines, Will realizes they have moved onto cultivated land, riding between the rows. 

Bávǫrr seems certain, but Will isn't sure how they intend to make a raid and capture a guide - theoretically a slave - with only two 'raiders'. His own capture had required a much more concentrated effort. She has a plan, but it had better not hinge on Will's combat skills, and she hadn't asked him to look ahead to see the way.

A flare of light to their left pulls Will's attention to two figures seated amongst the rows of crops, crouched low in the shadows of tall stalks of early corn. Will jumps - guards? Lookouts? They would never have seen them if the pair hadn't revealed themselves.

Bávǫrr draws her bow.

"It's alright," one of the figures calls in a low, strangely accented voice. It's rough - masculine. The tribal language is not his first. "You're looking for us." 

Taking careful aim anyway, Bávǫrr looks down the length of her arrow at the pair of expectant figures. The foremost has a lit candle with a small tin shield to direct the light toward Bávǫrr and Will, making it hard to see details of the men behind it and lifted just high enough to attract their attention without being visible to the village beyond. Will can see that they are dressed, and the further figure is carrying a small bundle. They seem strangely ready.

"I'm only looking for one," Bávǫrr says.

"I see two horses," the voice returns, stubbornly, "and you only have so much time to - trade?"

The last word is a question. A second voice adds, correcting in clearer Ardik, "Negotiate."

"Negotiate," the first repeats, accepting the substitution. He's the one holding the candle - a solid outline in front of the other man, protective.

"He's got a point," Bávǫrr glances back at Will for direction, giving the decision to him, as if he could choose to leave someone behind to slavery in the tribe that had driven him to the arms of death. In the posture and gesture of the foremost, he reads a clear resolve. They would not negotiate - or trade - their way out of this quickly enough to avoid notice by Calder's men.

"I hope you both can ride," Will says.

" _Can_ and 'are currently able to' are separate in this case," the second voice says. The pair extinguishes the candle and Will hears a sound he hasn't forgotten - the rattle of heavy chains. 

Will swings down instinctively off of Rata's back, taking mental stock of what he has that might free them from the shackles. He isn't sure he has the self restraint to take it in stages like Hannibal had with him. On the ground, he has a better look at the pair. 

They are older than he'd expected - not the youth that the Imperial army seems to mostly recruit. One is broad and barrel-chested with silvering, short-cropped hair that seems popular amongst the Imperials - perhaps as an allowance to their helmets. He has a rounder, expressive face, and a stubbly beard the same color and length as his hair, drawing attention to his firm mouth. The other is slimmer, a picture in contrast. He is handsome in the way that the Imperials seem to appreciate - waved longer hair is only just touched with gray, and bright, knowing eyes. Will has seen Imperial coins stamped such, and been told it was one of their Emperors depicted as a god. 

He is more interested in their chains, for the moment - they are chained at the wrists and ankles. As an extra measure of restriction, the chains connecting their leg shackles have been looped through each other, connecting them and confining them to a distance of about three feet. Cruel.

"They're right," Will tells Bávǫrr. "Do you have any way to break them loose?"

Bávǫrr lowers her bow. "No, and the longer we stand here the less likely it is to matter."

Her tone is mischievous enough to suggest she wouldn't really mind a fight. Will would prefer not to risk injury or death, though he has expected more risk than this, anyway. 

"We can share a horse if we're careful," the larger man says. "Help us get up."

It is a struggle that stands Will's nerves further on edge with every rattle of the chain it takes to get the pair up onto Illrhundr's low back. They must both sit carefully sidesaddle, holding onto their chains so as not to let them slap the horse's flanks. Will takes Illrhundr's reins, mouthing an apology to the irritated looking horse for the extra weight. It isn't the rescue or capture he'd envisioned, but there will be time to ask questions later.

They ride as quietly as possible out of the fields, and Bávǫrr takes the lead again, moving silently through moonlit and pale grass as Will leads Illrhundr with their - _captives?_ \- and watches behind them for sign of trap or pursuit. 

"Will they notice you're gone?" Will asks, when the village is far out of sight. 

"Maybe," one answers. "Probably not before morning."

"Will they come after you?"

"Don't you know already?" This is the other man, the younger one. 

Will isn't sure if he should reveal that it's easier to ask than to _see_. There's no point denying who he is - in the moonlight there's no mistaking his eyes. 

"How would I?" he asks instead.

"How, _dominus domino_ , would we know you were coming so we could wait for you?" this is the broader man, his voice does not seem to rise from a husky rumble. Will turns sharply and pulls Illrhundr nearer, looking intensely into the Imperial's eyes, searching. _No._

"You aren't a seer," Will says.

"A-?" he asks, as if he hadn't heard the word. There is no glow in his eyes. They are dark, barely touched by the moonlight. Brown, Will thinks.

The other man says something in the Imperial tongue, translating. The first laughs and responds, and Will thinks it's a clarification.

"I wasn't born one," the Imperial continues. "But some moments in my future, I _see_ , yes."

He places strange emphasis on the word, looking as intently at Will as Will does him. Will pauses, making a note.

"He _was_ the one we were looking for, right Bávǫrr?" Will clarifies. He doubts she wouldn't have mentioned it sooner if they had stolen the wrong slaves. It could just be mundane circumstance that Bávǫrr knew the most likely place to find them.

"Yeah," Bávǫrr says. "That's Rinault. The other one is a surprise, though."

"I'm Antonius," the slighter man supplies.

"Once we can cut the chain, we can turn you loose," Will offers.

"You can bet if Rinault is chained to him, it's by design," Bávǫrr says. 

Will isn't so certain that it's by _exact_ design, but it did make it difficult to argue taking only one of the pair. He glances at them again, looking at the comfort in their postures at being next to each other. He thinks he understands, and it looks familiar enough that Will feels any resolve he had to leave either of them behind without the other fade away.

"Some design," Will says, exasperated.

Bávǫrr laughs at him, knowing his thoughts. For a time, until they're certain there's no immediate pursuit, they ride as hard as they can with two men precariously balanced on one horse, and Will considers the conundrum. He has to resist the sudden urge to look forward into Hannibal's future, to be sure that he's okay and that there is a possibility for success in this suddenly mad venture. 

They turn south at sunrise, rounding the last headlands of the ocean inlet and heading further into Ardik territory. Bávǫrr slows them, doubling back and then turning them into a small riverbed to follow it downstream toward the ocean to make their tracks harder to follow.

Will studies the pair again in the light - and finds them just as contrasted. Rinault seems serious, if relieved, and Antonius seems to be genuinely charmed and intrigued by their surroundings, his eyes wandering over the scenery as if enthralled. He offers an alluring smile when he catches Will looking. In the light of day, they both look over-tired and under-fed, reminding Will of his time with Einar. They are not wearing shoes either, clothed in ragged cast offs, and yet there is a faint satisfaction in them. Will can hardly blame them - _they_ do not expect to have simply changed their captivity.

Will supposes they haven't. Even after his recent experience with Matthias, he knows he is a soft touch - the memories of his own captivity are still too close. He is already considering how to get them out of their shackles. 

"You're Rinault," Will clarifies with the older Imperial.

He hums assent, his voice rough but strangely lyrical as he answers, "You're Will."

Will's curiosity turns over again - another unnerving detail. “You saw that in your future?"

"Yes. I'm surprised you didn't. How does it work when a Seer looks forward to where he crosses paths with another?" Rinault asks, watching Will intently. 

"I don't look into my own future," Will lies, aware of Bávǫrr listening. "Only the futures of people I have crossed paths with before."

He looks again at Rinault, carefully studying his eyes. Hannibal didn't believe they had Seers in the Imperium, and Will sees no sign of one here, though the man is clearly Imperial. Rinault's eyes are brown and deep and while Antonius has blue eyes they are sea colored rather than pale sky, and have no inner light. 

"Then I suppose we have a lot to talk about," Rinault says, with an amused smile.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -I did not quite make it to 20, but here's two chapters anyway!  
> -Rinault is of course, Rinaldo in an older form. The oldest I could find was 'Reinhardt' but I wanted something a little closer to Rinaldo - and also Reynard and the fictional knight Rinault.   
> -Antonius is well, Anthony. Pretty direct name lineage there. In this case, he may even be named after the Lag-verse equivalent of Mark Anthony! Who knows, he's probably not telling.  
> -Never fear Hannigram folks this story will stay the course.


	20. þrá

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "As a very young man in Imperium, my family lived in the capital city," Rinault explains, as he sits patiently, waiting for the loop of chain that joins his ankles to Antonius' to heat in the small driftwood fire they dared. "They were - at the time - advisors and influential men."

"As a very young man in Imperium, my family lived in the capital city," Rinault explains, as he sits patiently, waiting for the loop of chain that joins his ankles to Antonius' to heat in the small driftwood fire they dared. "They were - at the time - advisors and influential men."

Will works the makeshift bellows, keeping the fire as hot as he can without risking too much smoke or the bared ankles kept close by necessity. The entrapped men sit as far back as they can, and Rinault has volunteered to sit closer, to risk heat traveling along the chain to his shackles first, if anything is to go wrong. He speaks to keep his mind occupied, and because Will demands explanation.

"We used to pass a fortune teller - she had once been a slave but her - _dominus_ -" Rinault glances back to Antonius for the word.

"Master," he supplies, scratching lines in the sand with a thin driftwood branch.

"Her master found it was more profitable to rent her talents to passers-by, having long since satisfied himself as to his own future - or at least, one suspects."

Will works the bellows, listening. He cannot speculate, but his own experience with the desire his gift raised suggests it isn't an unlikely prospect.

"When I was very young and very bold," Rinault continues, "I went to see her. She had eyes like yours, Will. A little like mine now, though only sometimes."

"I'm not sure I believe you," Will tells him. Not that there wasn't a fortune teller, or that one of his tribe - perhaps even more still - might have been captured and kept by the Imperium. They had a very long reach. But, that anyone could gain the sight, could _learn_ to use it without having started as Will had in his infancy, _this_ he's not ready to believe.

Rinault arches his brows, rolling his shoulders up in a shrug - it does not matter. "These are not the skills you want from me."

It does not matter if Will believes it or not. He needs only a guide, with the normal skills that familiarity would grant. At the moment, he needs Rinault to be able to ride and lead. 

The chain grows dull red in the heat of the fire, not glowing, but perhaps soft enough to bend free. Will would rather cut the links that hold the shackles closed on their legs. They seeme to trouble Antonius far more than Rinault, though Will has seen him try to take more of the burden. They are heavier, and cut into Antonius' thinner skin more, calling out to Will's sympathy.

For a time they will have to endure the remains of the shackles, but at the least they will be able to ride. Will fishes the chain out of the hot coals with a stout stick, and onto the makeshift anvil of a flat rock. Rinault and Antonius take up the slack to hold the chain taut and in place and Will - simply and efficiently - strikes it in the weakened links with another stone.

It is a noisy, prolonged process. Bávǫrr watches with some amusement as his efforts only make slow progress. She was unwilling to lend her sword as a lever and no branch was stout enough even for the softened iron. Will's arms are sore by the time the links part at last.

The action itself is cathartic. Will is unsure how he feels about the half-told story, about the idea that somewhere out there - perhaps as near as Rinault - there are other Seers. He has not considered it with any real weight since his hopes had died somewhere in his youth.

If there are still Seers in Imperium, does it diminish the worth of his trade to Britta's tribe? Will supposes he had better discover if they still exist there - whether he believes Rinault was one or not.

When the chain has parted, shedding one burning hot link out into the grass and at last freeing the pair from each other, they converse briefly in the Imperial tongue.

"Rinault says it gets a bit warm," Antonius explains, when Will looks at them for the next step. "And I assured him that I would stick my feet directly into the fire if it meant I could escape these damned chains."

Will is impressed by Antonius' command of the tribal tongue. He speaks it well and without the heavy, melodious accent Rinault has. There is something lyrical and engaging about Antonius' speech.

"I felt the same," Will confesses, carefully easing his chain into the fire. "I'm sorry we have no way to cut the shackles free."

" _You_ felt the same?" the question is pointed, brightly curious.

Will nods. He remembers the moment when he had first seen Hannibal's scars, had first understood that the world could and did reverse - the Imperials had all come, even this pair, with manacles hung on their belts, and the intent to conquer and return with slaves of their own.

"Strange how eager man is," Antonius says.

Will agrees. "How did you come to serve in the army?"

He does not, after all, seem the sort. There are none of the indications of training, none of the lean muscle made permanent over the years that he had seen on Matthias, or the sort of barrel-chested norm that Rinault seems to embody.

Antonius laughs - it makes warm shapes out of his eyes. "I offered offense to the king's favorite prostitute."

"I didn't believe Imperials had a king?" Will says, trying to recall what Hannibal has told him about it - very little.

"No, we don't," Rinault agrees. "But there's not quite a translation. In theory, all the men in Imperium who own land get together and _decide_ who is king - we call them _Imperator_."

Antonius rolls the last unfamiliar word off his tongue with ease. "But it hardly matters. I wrote some unpleasant - if true - poetry about a person more important than I. As a result, here I sit."

Will cannot quite imagine it - to be consigned to warfare as a result of words?

"It was very unkind poetry," Rinault assures Will, taking the meaning of his expression. His tone is so sincere that Will can't help but chuckle.

"And you?" Will asks.

"Well," Rinault temporizes. "Men of a certain age who are not great artists or poets are expected..."

Will senses that this is not the entire truth. Rinault is somewhat older than the age Will guesses is the 'expected' age for military service from the evidence he has seen before his own eyes. He can piece some of it together. Antonius was older than the norm by a little because he had been in good favor - until he wasn't. Rinault's story is more complex. Perhaps they are inter-joined, perhaps not. There is an old scar at Rinault's hairline that, to Will, suggests a past military service.

"And you were expected?" Will prompts.

"I found myself with a deficit of honor," Rinault says, summarizing. More story, fewer words. Will tries not to let curiosity drive him - he is already in one difficult situation. "And a fairly pressing desire to recover at least enough to please my wife."

_This_ surprises Will. He glances at Antonius quickly, and wonders if he has misread the situation. He doesn't think he has. 

Will lets Rinault do the hard work of smashing links of chain between rocks until the pair of them are free of as much chain as possible between their ankles. At least, as much as they can be with only the crude tools available. 

He is about to tell them to release their wrists as well, when the sudden memory of Matthias' betrayal stays his compassion. Neither of these men behave quite so coldly or duplicitously, but Will does not yet dare to trust them.

"So, Will," Bávǫrr interrupts his thoughts, finally finished skinning and gutting their meal of fish - some strange ocean animal that had a maw full of hundreds of teeth that she has hauled out of the ocean thrashing and seeming like a nightmare made real. "Now what?"

Three sets of eyes fix on him expectantly. Will wishes she didn't have such a knack for knowing just when he was struggling with a decision.

"Ymir and Brunn may be coming behind us," Will says after a moment to consider. "Hannibal and Matthias will be going ahead of us. We can't hope to cut them off except by their extreme misfortune at sea, so our plans must lay in heading to where they will wind up."

He looks expectantly at Rinault, who is toying thoughtfully with a severed end of chain. 

"Matthias is the son of a consul - one of the ruling body of lawmakers," Rinault explains. "His family lives in the great city in souther Galia, and you are right to think they can sail there faster. We must go through the Harmanic territories, and several other smaller holdings of the Imperium."

"Will they be hostile?" Will asks.

"Unlikely," Rinault says. "Harmania is used to travelers by now - though not perhaps Ardik ones. It's unlikely that they will find it worth rousing themselves for anything other than a raiding party or tax collectors."

Will weighs that information against waiting for Ymir and Brunn, for the safety those extra bodies would provide. He's not sure that - given what is likely to be a very long southward journey - one or two more days will make a difference.

"How long will we be traveling?" Will asks at last.

"Our march to reach you was over a month," Antonius laments. "From the Vendels."

"The return is like to be two. Perhaps more - it's better to ride, but you still must consider the horses and time to sleep," Rinault adds.

The time seems vast, and Will must endure this journey without Hannibal's help, must lead this poorly matched group to have any hope of making a rescue.

Instead of seeming impossible, however, even to someone who has spent far more of his life as a slave than not, Will feels the load settle more easily onto his shoulders now that it is at least loosely defined.

There is a perceivable end to his ordeal. 

"We'll wait - if Ymir and Brunn are coming, they'll find our signs and meet us in the next two days. If not, we won't have lost any head start by the delay."

The Imperials offer no input - neither approval nor complaint. Bávǫrr seems content - as she ever is - to let Will lead so long as she knows he is leading. She lays the fish out in big chunks in a pan she had brought and cooks it silver-skin side down on the same fire that had struck the chains.

Will closes his eyes and feels compelled to reach forward.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -þrá, persistence  
> -this chapter beta-read by Quedarius, to whom we make many viking toasts.


	21. þyrstr

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will's grip slides from Hannibal's fate three times, defying his every attempt to grab onto it. Frustrating, and each time his hold seems a little less solid. He grips harder, lunges further.The still water of his mind becomes splashes and ripples. He rouses out of his meditation irritated, and unable to find any hold on fate at all. It means Hannibal likely has his powers back, but it barely reassures Will. He's going to miss the certainty of where they were going, that he was still alive and would be by the time they got there.
> 
> "Well?" Bávǫrr asks.

Will's grip slides from Hannibal's fate three times, defying his every attempt to grab onto it. Frustrating, and each time his hold seems a little less solid. He grips harder, lunges further.The still water of his mind becomes splashes and ripples. He rouses out of his meditation irritated, and unable to find any hold on fate at all. It means Hannibal likely has his powers back, but it barely reassures Will. He's going to miss the certainty of where they were going, that he was still alive and would be by the time they got there.

"Well?" Bávǫrr asks.

Will reorients himself, finding it to be later in the evening than he expects. There's a fire, pressing warmth against his skin in the late summer cool.

"Well, I can't get a grip on him anymore," Will confesses. It seems to be just him and Bávǫrr, and a glance reveals the other members of their party have surrendered to sleep, huddled close without blankets.

"What's changed?"

Will isn't quite certain. "Something about what he does interferes - usually - with what I do."

She waits. He pushes his hands toward the warmth of the fire, and thinks about hot chocolate and his own warm, shared bed.

"Really, I don't know what changed to let me be able to see at all," Will confesses. "It seems to have resolved itself."

"Is that good or bad?" Bávǫrr asks, stirring a stick into the coals of the fire.

"I think a little of both. It means Hannibal is becoming Lagbrotna again and he's not helpless," Will starts, then amends, "not that he ever was helpless, but we'll have a harder time following him."

"No," Bávǫrr says. " _You'll_ have a harder time - the rest of us are still just following footprints and guesses."

Will laughs even in spite of her sharp remonstrative glare. It isn't funny at the same moment it is.

"Maybe it's time to just follow a few footprints and guesses," Will says. "We went out of our way for a guide after all."

She doesn't argue. Will gets up, shrugging the blanket off of his shoulders and laying it over the two sleeping Imperials. He pulls the wolf-eared cloak out of his bags instead and covers himself over with it - warm and heavy. Reassuring. It still carries the scent of home - of the cedar chest it was stored in and the warm smoke of the longhouse.

Will doesn't bother to check if Bávǫrr is keeping watch - she will or she won't and the Imperials seemed willing enough to stay.

He could find them again, if - wherever - they ran. The threads of their fate were not slippery. It lends Will enough confidence to sink into heavy sleep. A total surrender.

No wolves or stags hunt in his sleep. No dreams at all for once, and when he wakes the camp has increased by two - a pair of tired warriors in the forms of Ymir and Brunn.

"So we hear," Ymir says, making space for Will at the fire again, a pot of dark, bitter smelling tea heating slowly over the coals. "That somebody stole Lagbrotna."

"Matthias," Will admits, embarrassed. "We cured the ailment, but he took advantage of Hannibal's weakness. I only left him alone for a second."

Brunn laughs a little then sobers up when Will's sharp gaze pierces him.

"Well," Brunn says defensively, "it's the sort of trick _he_ would pull."

"Wait until Fredrik hears about it," Ymir agrees. "Well, he probably already knows."

"I bet Freda could hardly wait," Brunn says.

Will does not like to think what other ideas have begun to form in her mind with Ró nominally under the control of her common law husband while Hannibal was gone.

"You made good time," Will steers the conversation away from dark and dangerous ground.

"We spent part of it riding like Skaði herself was on our tail," Brunn says. "We avoided most of the uproar, but Einar's tribe-"

"It's not Einar's tribe anymore," Ymir corrects him. "You were _there_."

They trade a long look, speaking volumes in how much patience they had for each other and Will covers his smile. Brunn breaks the stare-off with a shrug.

"Well they're in an uproar overs some missing slaves," Brunn says. "Seems they thought they had something particularly valuable."

"So it seems to me," Ymir interjects, "that you've acquired two new slaves."

"Isn't that _strange_ ," Bávǫrr yawns, sitting up from her bedroll.

Just woken, her hair is a mess and sticking out in all directions like the nest of a distractible bird with an affinity for black. There are dark bags beneath her sleep-narrow eyes.

Ymir and Brunn both look at her for a long time, until she shows her teeth fiercely at them for their curiosity. Then she helps herself to the tea, throwing off her blanket and facing the early morning cold. The cup she draws steams in warning of the oncoming fall, and she blows on it as she sits down beside Will.

"Well, if our two new _guides_ see any escaped slaves, we'll be sure to send word back to Calder'," she suggests. "I'm Bávǫrr."

Ymir and Brunn make hasty introductions as well. She drinks tea and runs a withering eye over them, a warning not to consider her any less of a warrior because of her tribe or her womanhood. They get the message.

 

"So where are we at?" Brunn asks, scratching his cheek below the eyepatch.

"They have a boat," Bávǫrr says. "We don't."

Ymir winces, and glances back at their horses as if a boat would materialize amongst the supplies they'd packed.

"We're going the long way, overland," Will tells them. "I'd like you with us."

Ymir looks pleased and Will's heart gives a faint twinge of guilt to have pulled them away from Ró.

"Well, it beats sitting around," Brunn says, grinning. "We finished digging our way back out of Ró, so it's about time for something new."

"Thank you," Will says. 

"So who are our new companions?" Brunn asks.

"That's Rinault," Will gestures to one sleeping form, curled and sharing the blanket he had left, then the other. Antonius is sprawled in artful repose, half protruding from the blanket with his hair a beautiful dark scatter over his pale cheeks. "And the other is Antonius."

"Why two?" Brunn asks, ribald.

"Two for one," Will says. "They were chained together."

Brunn and Ymir exchange a look, and Will reads an assessment more of himself than the situation in it. He scoops some of the dark, strong brew out of the pot and finds that sipping it helps him wake a little faster. 

They seem content with this summary of events. Will decides that they're ready - as ready as they are likely to be - to start this journey in earnest. 

He wakes the Imperials with a nudge, a gentle voicing of their names and a guilty wince when their stirring results in a rattle of chains. He lets them alone to wake at their own pace, hearing Antonius' weak protests at the notion of rousing at _so forsaken_ an hour.

Will smiles a little, reminded of himself, and goes to ready the horses. Rata greets him with a wet exuberance that leaves the front of his shirt soaked and his pockets well investigated for treats. Will rubs her long ears and runs his hands over her neck, then lavishes some affection on Illrhundr's patchy hide. The animal is indifferent to his attention but not the food he offers. Practical.

When they're all mounted - Rinault almost comical on Illrhundr's blocky back and Antonius already on conversational terms with his taller horse - Will roughly orients them, and then rides at Rinault's side so they can converse.

"You said there was a fortune teller?" Will asks.

Rinault pauses a moment, meeting Will's gaze. He seems surprised by the interest.

"Yes," he says. His expression is cautious. "You remembered."

"You started to tell me a story," Will apologizes. "I'm interested in hearing the rest of it."

"Well, as a young man with a lot of the world laid out before me, I was curious," Rinault continues after a moment of recall to pick up the broken thread of the story.

"I went. I paid my fee, expecting to hear about all the promise. A happy marriage, seven children, a seat on the council," Rinault rolls his eyes, perhaps in dismissal of the poor judgment youth lent itself to. His gaze settles momentarily on Antonius.

"Instead, she took my coins and went into a trance. Five minutes of silence. Ten. A half hour. I thought she had gone to sleep, then when I couldn't wake her, I thought it must be a trick to steal my money. 

"So I left. It went quickly from my mind. Then, some days later I began to dream. Just confusing things at first - then dark images."

Rinault hesitates, glancing at Will, seeking understanding or input, Will isn't sure which. He offers neither. 

"Then the future - _my_ future," Rinault concludes, when Will has nothing to say. "It all seemed like a cruel trick. I went back to the fortune teller, but she was dead."

Will studies Rinault again, certain that this story fits together some way that isn't immediately apparent. For an instant, the foxish gleam in his dark eyes seemed more than that. Seemed a moon-blue glow reaching out to him. Will closed his eyes and felt back along his own fate without seizing hold of it.

Reaching for the most recent intersection - Rinault - he finds it strange even to his long experience. This chord feels unusual to the awareness of his mind - not quite a single silvery string as he was used to but thrumming somehow - woven? Two lines together, wound inseparably around each other like strands of a rope. 

Will jerks back, finding Rinault still looking at him, his eyes focused and intent but only deep brown. No answering shine reflects the luminous blue glow of Will's gaze.

"How did she die?" Willl asks, pulling the wolf-eared cloak tighter around his shoulders. the weather is turning for cold early this year.

"She never moved, even after I left," Rinault tells him. "They found her body still sitting and say she'd died of simple thirst. She just sat there."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -þyrstr, thirsty


	22. portus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He smells the port before they come to it; spoiling fish and dirty sea water mixed with the distinct city-smell of so many bodies and lives crushed together out of necessity or choice. Hannibal is stretching himself to the very ends of his short tethers - they have not un-chained him once, wisely. Matthias is stingy with opportunities, but Hannibal won't let despair rob him of readiness for those that would shortly be coming.

He smells the port before they come to it; spoiling fish and dirty sea water mixed with the distinct city-smell of so many bodies and lives crushed together out of necessity or choice. Hannibal is stretching himself to the very ends of his short tethers - they have not un-chained him once, wisely. Matthias is stingy with opportunities, but Hannibal won't let despair rob him of readiness for those that would shortly be coming.

Hannibal stretches every day to remain limber, using only the tools he is equipped with - his body, the immovable mast against which he can lever himself, and the chains themselves. He is poorly fed, but his body remembers how to survive. The softness from the rest of the past year - from the sickness that had followed and excesses indulged when will seemed to want them - these shed from his body and leave him spare and lean and alert.

They have shut him into the darkness like one of the animals bound for the gladiator rings, and Hannibal embraces the part. He was born to it. The feeling perched in his chest sits on tenuous, ready talons and Hannibal leans against that readiness, palms flat on the floor. His efforts have cut the skin over his wrists and ankles, refreshing old scar tissue with new scabs and Hannibal keeps careful track of how many marks he will repay against Matthias' skin.

The trireme hauls itself the last of the way in to dock on heaving oars. Hannibal has lost track of days and nights, of the number of times he has been made to beg for food with respect. He wonders how the rowers feel, with the absent and idle pity of a former slave. These men were paid, but also pressed to service - like much of the Imperial army.

Hannibal gathers himself. The trap door stays closed for a long time, but he can hear voices above deck after the sounds of the rowers disembarking. They have exhausted their supplies over the course of the trip, and the cargo hold is empty except for Hannibal.

They are planning how best to remove him from it. Hannibal sinks down, waiting. the door at last opens, admitting only lantern light - the darkness would work more in his favor than theirs, with his eyes so well adjusted.

"Hannibal," Matthias' voice carries down into the hold. "We can do this the easy way, but I don't think you're cut out for it."

The divine fist in Hannibal's chest squeezes, holding him still. _Not yet._

"The men I'm sending down are my own, and they have my permission to get you out of there whatever it takes," Matthias explains, a voice beyond the lamplight. "There's enough of them to make it happen."

Hannibal believes him. He holds very still, staying out of the circle of light.

"Watch his teeth," Matthias instructs, and Hannibal knows he's not taking this risk, no now that he's almost got what he wants. Wisely, his care grows as he gets nearer to his goal. 

Hannibal bites two of the men even though they have been warned and ignores the feeling that tells him to endure - he has been still for too long, and he only eases his pride by testing his strength. Hannibal makes nothing easy, fights until retribution leaves him sore and stinging. it takes a man on each limb to pin Hannibal flat and then to re-chain him, with his hands locked against the small of his back. 

They drag him from the hold into the moonlight, panting. Hannibal is dropped heavily onto the deck with little concern for his welfare, battered and weighed down with chains. He can taste blood in his mouth, and it wakes fire in his pulse, anger that sets him fighting his chains until the squeezing in his chest drowns all thoughts but the need for air. 

"Are you quite finished?" Matthias asks.

Hannibal pulls in a thin stream of fish-stinking air and it tastes so sweet that he finally subsides, stops fighting his chains. One of the men he bit lances a kick into Hannibal's side, leaving him coughing. 

Matthias crouches down, just out of Hannibal's reach, studying him with his head cocked to one side, birdlike. For a moment, he keeps his thoughts to himself, judging some aspect of Hannibal and finding it distasteful.

"You barbarians think you're so fierce," Matthias taunts, smiling. "But really, you just don't know how outmatched you are."

"We're only outmatched," Hannibal wheezes, feeling his aches and savoring them. His eyes find the places on Matthias' body where he will write his answers. "If we consider you equals."

Matthias chuckles. "Even hawks are laid low by crows. Which one do you think you are?"

Hannibal swallows blood and his answer - and the grip in his chest that directs him eases, telling him he is on the right course to cease arguing. Hannibal neither helps nor resists when the men lift him, dragging him down the gangplank as if he were a sack of potatoes.

He has an excellent view of the ocean-chewed planks of the dock,and then the dusty, well-trodden streets. Even at night, the traffic is continuous, and his carriers have to avoid numerous collisions. No one looks twice at Hannibal. The air grows more stale as they leave the ocean behind, and Hannibal does his best to remember the twists and turns they take. It doesn't matter, he doesn't know this port.

They cage him, in the end, without loosening his bonds.

"You can't cage me forever," Hannibal tells Matthias as the lock is affixed onto the door and snapped closed.

"I don't have to," Matthias assures him. "Only until I kill you."

He leaves Hannibal alone, thirsty from his struggles and unlikely to be granted reprieve from it because of his bad behavior. He does not know where he is, but the stars when he looks at them are familiar. He is far from home, far from his bed and the stars that hang over it.

These are the patterns of his childhood - the hunter, the serpent, the three headed hound that guarded the underworld, according to the Helenites. How it could do so from such a lofty position in the sky has always baffled Hannibal.

These gods don't comfort him, these are not the ones that direct his steps.

_Well,_ he allows himself, _not all my steps._ Some of what has brought him here was Randulf's work, the Lycaon blessing he passed on as a curse into Hannibal's blood and which set everything in motion.

No matter which gods have started this chain of events, Hannibal has been returned to Imperium for a reason. And, because he was here, Will is also coming. He does not like to think of the Seer here, where if he was not careful he would quickly become a target.

Hannibal closes his eyes, shifts so that fewer bruises press into the unforgiving cage floor, and tries to find sleep. For a long time it fights behind his closed eyes and measured breathing, and then in the smallest hours before dawn it steals over him.

His dreams live in a cold place this morning, in snow and white between the pines. Hannibal moves through the falling flakes with no regard for them, some smell calling him onward, luring him with the promise of all the hot blood and satisfaction he desires. He lusts after it, aching, letting it draw him onward until he sees the creature.

It is gray as smoke or ash, dull in the brilliance of the snow. It is very still, a large creature with massive, sweeping horns that look like logs and branches burnt to ash but still somehow holding shape. it is like once, a fire had gone through the whole of its body and left nothing behind but gray shadow.

The stag looks at him, colorless except for the brilliant, shining blue of its eyes. It does not move.

Hunger crawls up Hannibal's throat, and desire thrills down his spine in reverse. It pries open his jaws in a hungry snarl, frees his teeth to the cold air and Hannibal stalks forward.

The blue eyes fix on him, unwavering, and the stag lowers his horns in challenge, facing Hannibal with a crown of ash colored thorns and points. It is a forest he must wade through to reach his prize. Hannibal lunges forward. The stag swings its head once, powerfully and a tine of antler pierces Hannibal's side.

Pain goes white hot through his blood, and the power of the swing throws Hannibal back, flings his blood in a wide arc and stains the snow. He lands, crouched, turning and snarling again and the same motions repeat, leaving Hannibal struck in both sides and bleeding.

Blood flows out of him, but the sensation is pleasurable, each pulse wrenching from his sides like a good orgasm, blanking his mind and twisting his muscles into tight, tense knots.

Hannibal wakes in the cage, with his hands bound behind his back and the heat of his sun pouring down on him, leaving half his face feeling tender and sweating. He will have a burn.

The need to piss is nearly overwhelming, but his hands are chained at the small of his back unhelpfully, and Hannibal has not been left a chamber pot. His cage sits at the back of the stables and he supposes any mess will be expected. Instead, Hannibal eases onto his bruised back and thinks of deserts. Let Matthias dare come near enough for Hannibal to reach, if he can hold it that long.

He remembers his dream only as colors and sensations. With his dick so hard on waking, he thinks it must have been a dirty one and Hannibal lets go of it, willing his thoughts away to silence until Matthias returns.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -portus; latin for port  
> -sorry these two chapters are so late, I honestly simply forgot today  
> -my beta reader is on break, though still amazing. Any mistakes are solely my own!


	23. carcer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Did you miss it?" Matthias asks on the third day of riding. He has forgiven Hannibal for soaking his clothes long enough to gloat, apparently.
> 
> Hannibal's wagon - the cage has been loaded wholesale onto its creaking buckboards - bumps and jostles over the paved road, the once straight flagstones and wide via fallen into disrepair. They are far from the heart of Imperium.
> 
> "What's to miss?" Hannibal asks.

23.

"Did you miss it?" Matthias asks on the third day of riding. He has forgiven Hannibal for soaking his clothes long enough to gloat, apparently.

Hannibal's wagon - the cage has been loaded wholesale onto its creaking buckboards - bumps and jostles over the paved road, the once straight flagstones and wide via fallen into disrepair. They are far from the heart of Imperium.

"What's to miss?" Hannibal asks.

"Glory, power," Matthias lists. " _Civilization_. Paved roads and running water. Shining temples reaching toward the heavens."

Hannibal looks around them at the fields, green and tall wheat or ears of corn ripening and readying. Nothing is evident but farmland, small villas and barns, and the road they followed in poor repair.

"No," Hannibal says. "I did not miss it."

What was worth taking away, Hannibal has taken. He left everything else and thought about it as little as possible. the wagon creaks and jumps beneath him.

Matthias has finally relented and joined Hannibal's hands in front of him for practical reasons. Hannibal promised behave himself for the time being, in order to keep the privilege. 

"Well," Matthias continues, watching Hannibal through the bars - his captivity seems to equally please and fascinate Matthias. "It's coming for you. The Imperium takes defeat poorly."

"Every man takes defeat that way," Hannibal says. "You're not so profound as you think you are."

It earns him some small space of silence, and Hannibal leans back against the bars and watches the countryside go by. There is little difference between the places, Hannibal realizes. Little difference in the daily concerns - feeding families, tending farms, advancement if it is possible. Borders and loyalties rendered the perceived differences and lack of understanding. Matthias had lived with the Ardik for a year and still failed to see anything but barbarism. 

Pride could blind men. Hannibal is not immune, either. Having returned to Imperium, his gift pounds wakening in his chest again, meaning he's here for a reason. When had he started minding the inconvenience of his gift?

_When it first pulled me away from Will._

"Are you no longer concerned about pursuit?" Hannibal asks.

"He'll never catch us when it matters, and if he comes to us when we're ready for him - well," Matthias looks at him, cocks a smile that suggests he's seeking Hannibal's reaction. "Then he'll be mine."

Hannibal reserves his immediate judgment, though the anger washes through him at the lack of understanding. Will is not a possession - not Hannibal's, not the Ardik, and not one of the Imperium by any stretch of imagination or unlikely scenario. Matthias was welcome to try and take Will's freedom now that it was returned to him, but he isn't capable.

"You won't be ready for him," Hannibal says.

Matthias laughs, showing his teeth, pleased with Hannibal's bravado. 

"I will be if I have your gift," he says.

It has lost some of its effect for the repetition. Hannibal looks at Matthias for a long moment. He sees a young Imperial who enjoyed all the benefits of his station to the fullest extent. He is used to the lofty position he has been hoisted to. It has, in some ways, ruined him as a man.

"If you think you can take it, why haven't you?" Hannibal challenges.

"The timing isn't right yet," Matthias answers.

"You don't know how."

Matthias doesn't respond, riding at an even pace with the wagon. He rides one of the short, fine gray horses that the Imperials prize, delicately boned but hardy. It is worth a small fortune - the worth of an average man's lifetime. Around them, five strong guards keep bandits at bay, and the wagon driver sits carefully out of Hannibal's reach. The guards are as much to keep Hannibal in check, should anything go wrong. It isn't enough.

"I know _who_ knows how," Matthias continues after a long silence. Hannibal stops working on slipping his shackles and listens. " _And_ I know the timing isn't right yet. Your gift is granted by the gods, and to wrest it from you I have to wait until mine are strong enough to defy yours."

It sounds unlikely. A Helenic tale, where in their great king of gods would magic himself into a mortal animal, or the great wars in which the gods came down and fought alongside men.

"Why should the gods listen to you?" Hannibal says. "They do as they please."

"I would better please mine than you do yours," Matthias tells him. "After all you are captured and none of that guidance that helped you win against Iohannes has saved you from it."

"Perhaps I no longer have the gift." It is an easy lie to tell. 

"We'll know soon enough."

There is no hint of doubt in Matthias' tone, no healthy reserve. Only the conviction of the nearly mad. Hannibal should have kept him closer still, or heeded Will's wariness and given him to some far-flung tribe where his potential for harm would have been limited.

Easier to look behind and see the path traveled than to guess the road ahead - at least without a Seer around. Hannibal puts his faith in himself, then. If it is not yet time for Matthias to take his gift, perhaps it isn't time yet for Hannibal to move. It will come.

Matthias engages his men when it becomes clear that Hannibal has nothing further to say. From the chatter, Hannibal discovers they are familiar with each other - the men work for Matthias' father, part of the rescue effort. They are not soldiers, but they are big men. Armed

"We sent word to the consul," one of the men says. 

"I can send my own correspondence," Matthias answers.

"We're under orders to communicate directly," the leader says - Hannibal thinks he is in charge, at least amongst this group.

"Well, what did he say, then?"

"No return message yet. I was supposed to send word when we made port, so he can be ready for your return. I did." The leader's attitude is tight, if proper. Hannibal notices he carries a second sword at his hip, in addition to the one on his back. 

"And I suppose you made a report about me to my father, like the good _dog_ you are," Matthias accuses, disgusted with the man. Hannibal sees that he does not like free thinking and initiative in those he perceives as subordinates.

'Good Dog' does not look threatened. Hannibal watches him for any sign of reaction to Matthias' implied displeasure and sees none. He judges Good Dog to be comfortable in his position, confident of the good graces of his direct superior.

"I told him you brought an unexpected prisoner," Good Dog admits, unashamed.

Matthias eyes him acidly, displeasure clear on his features. Hannibal takes note of the tensions.

"Well, he'll be pleased when he sees who it is I've captured," Matthias asserts.

Hannibal isn't so certain. This plan of Matthias' seemed hastily, opportunistically appended to the rescue, and Hannibal considers it no only unwise but familiar. Hannibal would only have done it if he felt the pull, but he's certain the others have looked on Hannibal's actions in taking captives as he now looked at Matthias'.

"We'd get home faster without the prisoner," Good Dog observes.

"I'm not in a rush," Matthias assures him. "In fact, we need to make a stop along the way."

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -carcer; a cage, a prison, a jail cell


	24. braut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The roads change slowly. From deeply rutted dirt wagon tracks to crushed gravel as they go on, and then, slowly, like reaching fingers stretching out over the space of lands and countries, they become cut stone.
> 
> It is different from navigating in the Tribal lands, where they must devise direction by sun and stars and landmarks. There is no question here - find the road, follow the signs south. An invading force, if any could ever be mustered that might hope to challenge the Imperium, would only have to follow the roads.

The roads change slowly. From deeply rutted dirt wagon tracks to crushed gravel as they go on, and then, slowly, like reaching fingers stretching out over the space of lands and countries, they become cut stone.

It is different from navigating in the Tribal lands, where they must devise direction by sun and stars and landmarks. There is no question here - find the road, follow the signs south. An invading force, if any could ever be mustered that might hope to challenge the Imperium, would only have to follow the roads. 

"It keeps men busy when there are no wars to be found," Rinault explains, when Will asks about the massive undertaking of building and maintaining the Vias - one letter off from 'vitas', as Antonius suggested, the Imperial word for 'life'. "They build roads and aqueducts, to bring trade and water. Those big cities, they devour water and goods."

"And people and spirits. _Gods_ sometimes," Antonius adds, his commentary always sliding over and around Rinault's dry delivery of details. He has always answered sparsely since Will cut his first story short. Antonius expands, seeming unable to stop himself from providing wry, poetic insight into the workings of a world that has exiled him. 

"Aqueducts?" Will asks, unable to make sense of the word. His mastery of Imperial tongue is still progressing, still slow. He stumbles over the soft words.

"They bring water," Rinault says. "From the tops of mountains down into the cities. You'll see soon."

Will tries to imagine. He tries to imagine - or to remember when he didn't spend all day riding, when all of his clothes weren't choked and coated with dust. They and the horses have all grown lean. Not enough rest, and only enough food so they could all keep going. Even the most seasoned riders - Bávǫrr, Ymir and Brunn - have suffered aches and sores. 

"I miss my bed," Brunn voices aloud, and the whole party feels it. 

" _I_ miss your bed," Ymir agrees, in good cheer.

The land around them grows progressively tamer as they continue, divided and parceled into estates. There is no land here that does not seem to be owned and put to purpose. Like the men - Will sees many slaves. Some wear collars, some just wear colors - and they seem to come from all walks of life, all nations that Will is familiar with. Imperials are conquerers, and make slaves of those they conquer. Then, eventually they free them to become part of the chain. Though he looks, Will sees no signs of any of his own people.

"Antonius," Will asks," where are we headed? We've made it to the Imperium, surely, but where will Hannibal be?"

"We think," Antonius indicates Rinault, riding ahead to keep an eye out for trouble. Better to have a scout fluent in the language, even if he did have chains rattling at his wrists. It seems to pass unremarked, once it's explained that Will owns him. Alongside them now rises one of the great stone works - arches supporting a dripping artificial river, which Will had found a marvel until he had seen miles of it. 

"We think that Matthias will be headed for his father, in the capital," Antonius says. "I don't know Matthias but his father has more than one reason to be ashamed of him."

"He sent rescue," Will says, confused. "Why bring Matthias back if he's such an embarrassment?"

"I'm sure he wouldn't have if not for the question of inheritance," Antonius says. "The consul has only one legitimate heir - Matthias. If he could be bothered to give up prostitutes and pleasure houses for long enough to sire another, he would not have to concern himself with the boy."

"Did you write poems about them, too?" Will asks, amused.

"As a matter of fact, I may have slandered the consul once or twice," Antonius confides. His smile suggests he's pleased with himself, and he makes a gesture that rattles his own chains. "Would you like to hear them?"

Will laughs. Antonius has performed his poems several times in camp, much to the delight of everyone but Rinault. He seems unable to enjoy the ribald verses with the knowledge of what it has brought them to. Will thinks - in part - that the connection between Rinault and Antonius is what brought Rinault to the battlefield at an age when he was no longer obligated to serve in the Imperial army.

"How do you remember so much verse?" Will asks, watching Antonius shift the shackles on his wrists. The space of weeks - months - that they have ridden together has aggravated the skin beneath them on his wrists. Will has offered to remove them, but Antonius suggested they use the excuse of coming to Empire to sell slaves.

"Well, it's how I made a living," Antonius explains. "My father insisted on Philosophy, which is extremely dull. I crept sideways - figuratively - and seduced my tutor - not figuratively - into teaching me poetry."

Will listens, interested. "You can live on that in Imperium? Pardon my ignorance but - it seems too martial, too practical to embrace the arts fully."

Antonius nods. "Not out here, of course. And having money helps. No one expects a poet to rise out of the gutter and become a name that people speak."

He pauses, and a thought makes him smile, "They seem to have very little trouble expecting that a poet will fall down _into_ the gutter and become a name that people curse."

It does not sound like an easy life or a stable one. Yet, previously whenever Antonius spoke of his life he did so with pleasure and abandon - it was clear how much he enjoyed it. 

"And Rinault? What did he do, before he was a soldier?" Will asks.

Antonius looks ahead. Rinault is visible riding along the road, a distant figure on a short, spotted horse. He looks, for just a moment, fond.

"Mostly, he was the butt of jokes," Antonius admits. "Sometimes, the other old families saw fit to show their malice outright."

The answer isn't what Will expects. It confuses him and he wonders if he _should_ pursue it further. For the moment, he lets the matter drop, uncertain if it's any of his business. If it mattered to the rescue, Will is certain they'll tell him. 

"Will there be any trouble for you to return?" Will asks. "You were basically banished."

"Having survived an ordeal that General Iohannes did not, I have some advantage," Antonius says. "Or at least an _excuse_. Honestly, I'm not so well known in the capital that there's much danger of recognition, and anyone who would know me won't be truly surprised to see me returned in chains."

Will doesn't answer immediately. He knows Antonius, and wants to free him from the chains. However well he wears them - and Will has seen him use them as an advantage - he is the sort of creature who should be free. Captivity would slowly kill Antonius, as it had slowly killed Will. For now, Will could ease it to comfortable enslavement.

With success, freedom would follow. He hasn't spoken the promise, but he's acknowledged it to himself. He wonders if this was how Hannibal had come to the conclusion to free him, if there had been more debate. Hannibal seems to have a harder heart, but Will knows there's more to him than what he reveals for others to see.

They ride on, always south, always on the roads. Will wonders if it is less safe to go off them. "Don't roads encourage raiders? Caravans are tempting targets if you know exactly where they're going to be."

"There are patrols that keep the bandits off - thought at times they're as much a danger to the caravans for extortion as the raiders are. Further north, it used to be that..." Antonius hesitates, as if gauging his words for possible offense.

"Go on, Antonius, nothing will shock me," Will assures him.

A brief, flashing glance from Antonius suggests that he takes the words as a sort of challenge. Will laughs and revises.

"I've heard your poetry and I know the worst of the Tribes at war," Will reminds. "No sex or violence can compare, when rendered only in words."

"The Surdik were the biggest threat to caravans in the North," Antonius continues, reassured. "But - well. I doubt they will be raiding anyone for a few years."

Will agrees. Perhaps each other if they get desperate for food or animals or even women, but they would no longer raid the Imperium with such impunity. 

"No other dangers?" Will asks.

"Well, not to us," Antonius says. He gives an indicative glance over the party, as if taking in their collective worth. "We're too armed and too sparse. Slaves aren't worth stealing, when the gold and silk and spices that could buy them travel along the same road."

Sensible. In Imperium the worth of a man seemed little. Slaves were plentiful, richness abundant because of it. On either side of the road, tall and golden wheat grows in the fall sun, ready for harvest. Will knows, like in Ró, the crops were planted by slaves. He has seen them being tended by slaves as he rides. They would be harvested, dried, and laid to storage by them.

Out there in the fields there were men born on all corners of the world - some were certainly Ardik, some Imperial, some - just out of sight in the golden rows - might be Seers. Or might have been, once, before the weight of slavery and Imperial disbelief had crushed them flat.

He is thinking about that, about how much of Imperium Hannibal brought back with him to Ró, when he wonders if that's not the issue at the root of their problems. Ardia - for all it's lack of unification - should not become unified like the Imperium has. Not until it was vast and every part of it was indistinguishable. Until there were no men, only cogs and wheels like the great siege machines that Britta kept.

The sun sets, they ease down tired from their mounts. As usual, as the habit has developed, Antonius sees to the horses, Ymir and Brunn gather wood. Bávǫrr hunts their food, and Will and Rinault are left to pitch tents, to lay out bed rolls and make ready the camp.

The nights drop down to cold quickly now, their breaths fogging out in great clouds as they work. When Bávǫrr opens the rabbits up, great gouts of heat pour out. Will is grateful for the cloak, pulling the hood up over his hair. It's grown long, he thinks - and wonders if Hannibal's braid is longer yet.

They are all truly exhausted by the long journey, Will realizes. There is no chatter around the fire, no song or smiles. Ymir and Brunn lean together as they eat, before retiring to their shared tent to curl up warm together. Antonius and Rinault also share, and Bávǫrr tucks herself away with an extra bear skin, leaving Will to crawl into his own tent, alone.

The smell of home has faded from his cloak, leaving only the faintest scent of salt and ocean. he curls beneath it anyway, to ward off the cold that deepens over the long night. He doesn't dream prophecy, but only half formed wishes. Memories of waking safe and comfortable, stretched skin on skin with soft warmth at his back.

Will dreams an old ache into his bones, and the cold night air sets it in.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -braut, a road  
> -My usual beta, the amazing Quedarius, has moved on to her own projects. :) Which, you should check out - try the Hogwarts AU here: http://archiveofourown.org/series/285096 . That being said, I'm on my own to catch my own crappy spelling and bad punctuation and repetitive words. As I am fundamentally a lazy self-editor, I expect you guys to forgive me for not caring enough to do more than spellcheck. Sorry!


	25. gjalda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Well," Will says after a long silence. "Here we are."

"Well," Will says after a long silence. "Here we are."

The city stretches out below them, massive and sprawling. It is not the first they've seen. In Imperium, the cities seemed to bloom more and more frequently on the landscape as they got closer to the center. They are high enough to look down into the reaching arms of this city - more vast even than the others, crawling out across the land like it was stroking the holdings it has acquired. An affectionate raking of fingernails on gnarled and reaching fingers. It goes on and on, this white city, stained brown with ramshackle huts at the edges. will can see at least three rings of wall, and between them the city seems to have grown. Now, it grows still, many of the worst houses outside the third wall and vulnerable; shameful skirts dragging in the mud.

How would they find Hannibal in this great, grasping claw? How would they pry him loose?

"There's nothing to match the sight of home," Antonius says, wistful. "Save the _smell_ of it."

"Romus, having conquered his brother, settled down to lay the first stone of the city," Rinault says. "A fine grave monument."

"We'll need clothes and quarters," Bávǫrr says, her eyes narrowing as she looks down, memorizing the streets she will soon have to navigate. "And time to search."

"We have no money," Will says. "Unless you packed a bag of Imperial Coppers?"

Bávǫrr shakes her head, thin lipped. This has been a thorn in their sides since entering the Imperium. they have passed hungry and tired through the lesser cities, unable to purchase supplies or nights in the rest houses. The wheels of this civilization turn only for gold or trade goods that could be transformed into it.

"I can't say I'd mind a chance for a bath, some fresh clothes, and a real bed," Ymir says. "Maybe we can trade work..."

"It's a slave nation," Rinault reminds.

"But..." Antonius says, "I might know some people who still owe me a favor or two."

Rinault looks at him sharply, strangely, and then seems to relent. "What if you encounter someone who owes you for an insult?"

  
"Surely they won't remember-"

"Gnaius will remember," Rinault says, in Imperial.

"Well," Antonius allows, answering in kind. "I did threaten to face-fuck him for calling my poetry sappy."

Will is certain he's misheard the words in Imperial, that he has the wrong translation.

"You said you'd shove your cock up his un-oiled asshole in a public recitation on the steps of the grand library," Rinault reminds, droll.

Will has to jam a hand against his mouth to keep his laughter at bay. Antonius looks pleased with himself, tasting supreme pleasure in his memories.

"I did, didn't I?" he preens. "Well, we'll have to hope Gnaius doesn't find me before I find _us_ some coin."

Rinault doesn't comment on how likely that is. "The Consul's mansions are within the innermost wall. Whatever Matthias is planning, he'll have the most privacy and everything he needs there. In order to get in, however, to the Emperor's private playground, we'll need..."

Rinault looks over the ragged party, and Will is aware of how the months have settled on and changed him, of how dirty he is.

"More," he finishes. He laughs, a single-syllable sound. "And some excuse for three Ardik and two slaves to enter."

"More?" Will asks for clarification on the vague description of what they'll need.

"We'll need to clean up, dress up, present ourselves as more than beggars at the door. It's like Antonius says, we'll need to call in old favors."

Will feels exhausted, but they are here. Hannibal is close -t he end of this is finally near. Soon, he'll see Hannibal again. He pulls the hood of his cloak up.

"Then we'll go down there and be 'more'," Will decides, kicking his horse into motion.

The city looms up quickly and swallows them deep into to the labyrinth of roads twisting between the hovels. They pass a trade shack or two offering baskets or spun thread, cobbling or other repair services. No one bothers to try and sell them any wares, even here. They give off the aura, to these experienced eyes, of having nothing to offer.

Ahead, the road fills and jams and here the sounds of voices hawking wares does ring out, taking advantage of a captive audience. Rinault leads them straight for the press of bodies, resigned.

"What's holding them?" Will asks.

"The gates," Rinault tells him, gesturing to the first wall looming up ahead of them. "The goods undergo inspection for taxation on their way in."

Thorough, Will thinks. Apparently also time consuming. "Will they tax us?"

Antonius laughs. "Our whole issue is _lack_ of tradable goods. What would they tax?"

Will admits he has a point. They aren't there to sell goods. "And they'll let us in?"

"If they bother to ask our business," Rinault suggests, indicating Antonius. "Say you've come to ransom _him_."

Will glances at Antonius who shrugs amicably.

"Why not you?" Will asks Rinault.

"My family is dead," Rinault says, expressionless. "And I haven't left my wife enough to afford it."

Antonius shrugs when Will glances at him for confirmation. _It's Rinault's story to tell, and he seems content not to tell it._. They are nearly to the gate now. Ahead of them, the crowd begins to move through, and around them peddlers raise their voices in the hopes of making a first sale - fine scarves for the winter or fruits from the end of the harvest season. The men and women offering them look ragged and desperate, and Will is glad he doesn't have any coin so he does not have to choose which to help.

The guards gather their party together, glance them over cursorily, and decide it's unlikely they have any goods - not even to smuggle in. Antonius chats with them charmingly, and the guards exchange many long looks at the perceived futility of the party's mission, before they pass at last poorer only a few minutes of time.

Beyond the wall the buildings become more permanent, older. Some are in disrepair, but the streets at least seem to have order. Rinault converses briefly with Antonius.

"Will," Antonius says. "I'll need to visit several people to see if I can't collect on my debts. It will be best if I go alone."

His gaze slides toward Rinault, who is not looking at him. Rinault's jaw is firm and Illrhundr shifts in protest of his tight hold on the reins. Will senses the tension and doesn't quite know what to make of it.

"I'm not sure I trust you to go off alone in your home city," Will says.

Antonius considers.

"And if something happened to you, we'd have no way to know or find you," Will continues. "I'm coming with you."

Antonius doesn't argue - he is, after all, the one wearing chains. He glances at Rinault.

"I can offer my home as temporary shelter if my wife still owns it," he suggests.

"Then take the others and go there," Will orders, without waiting for input. Bávǫrr will not like it, nor Ymir and Brunn, but such a large group would attract more attention, and Will has a suspicion Antonius would like some privacy while conducting his affairs. "We'll come and meet you as soon as we can."

Bávǫrr glances at will but decides not to argue, saying, "Don't take too long."

Rinault rounds them up and the party divides. Will trails behind Antonius, as he winds his way through the streets, glancing up to take his position occasionally from the tall spires that seem to reach up toward the sky like the arms of the city reach across the land.

"What are those?" Will asks, of the tall spires that Antonius takes his direction by.

"Temples," Antonius says. "Some of them. Others are palaces, now. Rich men have taken over where some old gods have vacated, or some gods have moved to more grandiose households."

"Where are we going, Antonius?" Will asks.

"To call some favors," he repeats. "I have some old lovers who won't mind the chains 'round my wrists - one or two that might _enjoy_ it outright."

"I can't-" Will says, drawing his horse up. Antonius looks at him, calm, no hint of burden. "I can't ask you to sell yourself like that."

"You haven't," Antonius says. "I've volunteered to. Consider it a beginning payment on my freedom - and his."

A tip of his head back in the direction they'd come from. _Rinault._ "And our extrication back from Imperium to Ardia."

"I..." There's a lot in that to process, a lot to the request that Will wasn't expecting. _He wants me to make the decision before we have Hannibal back._ Will wets his lower lip and starts from the top. "I won't ask you to endure that for any of those outcomes."

A pause. Antonius watches Will and he becomes aware of the sound of water in the silence. "You don't want to stay in Imperium?"

Antonius shakes his head. "There's nothing here for either of us, if we take Laura away with us."

Will waits. Antonius leads on, turning away before he continues speaking. His next words are nearly lost beneath the sounds of running water from the fountain they pass.

"I have endured worse in freedom than this captivity," he says. "I can pay this small price for a real freedom."

Another pause.

"Besides, there's no other way."

-


	26. prandium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal is not privy to the reunion between the consul and his son. Matthias - as travel worn and weary as his men - leaves Hannibal caged in the courtyard. the four walls of iron bars, the iron grate hiding the sky and ground, all seem to press in on Hannibal whenever he lets himself be aware of them. The fountains and funk of misery remind him of a greater captivity still. Hannibal - once a known gladiator and safe bet for returns, finds his homecoming an unwanted and unnoticed one. He wonders how many Imperials even knew of his victory.

Hannibal is not privy to the reunion between the consul and his son. Matthias - as travel worn and weary as his men - leaves Hannibal caged in the courtyard. the four walls of iron bars, the iron grate hiding the sky and ground, all seem to press in on Hannibal whenever he lets himself be aware of them. The fountains and funk of misery remind him of a greater captivity still. Hannibal - once a known gladiator and safe bet for returns, finds his homecoming an unwanted and unnoticed one. He wonders how many Imperials even knew of his victory.

Good Dog, travel worn and still wary of Hannibal - now known to bite and to make himself difficult - issues orders to the house slaves that appear. For a time, Hannibal occupies the courtyard, aware of how filthy he is, of how cool the evening air is getting against his thin, ragged clothes.

When Good Dog returns, they size each other up through the bars, alone together for the first time.

"I'm supposed to move you to a cell," Good Dog tells Hannibal, watching him intently.

"Is that so," Hannibal says.

"I have a theory," Good Dog says, palm resting on the hilt of the sword at his hip, open handed and relaxed.

Hannibal is in no position to avoid learning it.

"I don't suppose if I offered to let you walk out of that cage if your own free will and promised a proper, warm cell and a bucket of clean water and soap," Good Dog continues, watching Hannibal's reaction - _hungry_ \- acutely. "You would consider exercising that free will in making this transition an easy one?"

The thought appeals, even if Hannibal is being cajoled into behaving like a dog would be. The tone of respect, the offer of a genuine choice in how the proceedings will play out all combine.

"If it were likely that I would come out of the cell again alive," Hannibal says, "there would be a stronger reason."

Good Dog doesn't argue, he just waits -expecting a certain answer. A yes or a no, a firm basis on which to proceed. Hannibal could always lie - but a positive answer will draw worries and a negative will bring the application of force. Hannibal is exhausted, filthy and hungry and chained.

"Yes," Hannibal decides, "I'll do as you ask."

Good Dog swings the cage door open and steps back, letting Hannibal climb free - the sun feels good on his sore skin, though the air itself is cold. Hannibal can feel it on his dirty scalp, a reassurance that the world is moving slowly on. He is guided into a stone space beneath the mansion, vast and rough and cavernous. There is a strange warmth here, and many iron-barred doors. 

As promised, Good Dog leads him to a cell - bigger than his cage, but solid stone on three sides and windowless, with a heavy iron door. There is straw to sleep on and a bucket he suspects is for the evacuation of his bowels, or vice-versa if he so pleases. Good Dog shuts Hannibal in, and the first stirrings of restless madness takes hold.

He is, at least, true to his word. Better - he brings a steaming bucket of clean water, which he puts against the bars of the cage so Hannibal can make use of it to his full convenience, and a hard square of soap. Beyond that, Hannibal is given his privacy to wash, Good Dog the convenience to see to his other duties. A fair trade.

Getting clean is only as important as taking stock - his gift creates a low, wary buzz in Hannibal's awareness. Something is coming, something dangerous. Hannibal scrubs quickly, furiously until the water has turned gray and his skin feels scoured clean, no longer dulled to sensation by a thick layer of traveling dust and old sweat.

By the time he's done the soap has diminished appreciably in size. It is not completely a satisfactory situation. Hannibal is still caged, captive of Matthias and presumably at the mercy of his father the consul. Still, he's clean. He resolves not to kill Good Dog out of spite if he can manage it. He has a sympathy for such men, hired to provide strength for the old, frail men who spent more time at politics and philosophy than exercise. 

His fingers find no weakness in the stone walls, his eyes cannot pick out any rust on the iron hinges of the door. The cell appears to be carved out of solid stone beneath the foundations of the mansion above, perhaps an allowance for the family to keep gladiators for the ring - or wild animals for consumption. Either way, hay and a bucket were ample provisions.

With such dour surroundings, they had broken Hannibal the first time when he was much younger. The inactive, quiet time had been torture to his quick mind - the slow pace of his own life a ticking awareness like water dripping somewhere unseen to his active thoughts. Though he is older now and better experienced, the anxiety returns quickly.

Hannibal does his best to banish it - he will have to be patient for weeks, perhaps months. The journey overseas had been long - Will's journey, if he came overland would be longer. Hannibal will have to wait. 

In his chest, the hold suddenly becomes tighter, bearing down until Hannibal finds it difficult to breathe. Somewhere he can't see, a door creaks open, and Hannibal angles himself for the best view, seated back from the bars. He expects Matthias, perhaps reprimanded by his father and coming to feel powerful again by reassuring himself of Hannibal's captivity. 

The man that appears is not Matthias; he does not even strongly resemble him. He is older, with a heavy bearing and the purple toga of rank, worn without any ornamentation. He steps carefully in the hall between the wall- dotted here and there with small, deep, barred windows for light - and the row of cells. His steps are confident, but light - he does not seem to want to put his feet into anything unpleasant. 

The consul has round features, a heavy middle, and fierce eyes. He rakes them over Hannibal -ragged but clean at least, over his relaxed posture and stillness. He doesn't look impressed.

"You must be Hannibal," the consul observes; dry. "My son says you're the great warlord who defeated Iohannes and his army."

"I killed him personally," Hannibal says. It isn't a boast. "The defeat of his army belongs to all the tribes of Ardia."

The consul looks him over once more, displeased with the picture he's presented, with Hannibal as a whole picture. Hannibal feels his gaze like the pricking of needles against his skin.

"I have to say, the reports that came back..." the consul says, folding his arms over his broad chest. "I expected you to be bigger - they said the Ardik were monsters, giants, evil spirits..."

Hannibal says nothing. These were supposed to be enlightened sons of the Imperium. even they needed to comfort themselves in defeat. Wild stories justified their fear and empty-handed return.

"Well, maybe evil spirits in your case," the consul continues, picking up on Hannibal's refusal to engage in speculation. "I hear you have a very particular gift."

Hannibal doesn't answer.

"And," the consul rocks back on his heels, an absent gesture. "Though I know Matthias is prone to exaggeration, I am old enough to remember how much money I lost at your fights when we were both younger men."

Hannibal's attention catches, and he looks again at the consul. "You should have changed how you bet."

The consul smiles, bright and vicious somehow even on his broad, amicable features. "I've changed the whole _game_."

Then, Hannibal thinks, Matthias' plan must be valid - or the consul must believe it is. He does not, however, reveal it. 

"Matthias has always worried me," the consul confesses. "He had no real head for the future, no thought for what's coming. I hoped his time with the army would wise him up."

The consul's expression changes a little, eyebrows arching up, indicating a favorable outcome. "I love being right."

-


	27. sjau

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will waits in a courtyard, his thoughts a steady trickle of uncertainty echoed by the sound of the fountain he sits at. Rata drinks from it, waiting with far more patience than he can find. The white, carved stone that the Imperials have raised to staggering heights cannot hold his gaze for more than an instant. Will is aware of the beauty of the carved stone faces, but inappreciative. They are Imperial faces, with no compassion for his plight.

Will waits in a courtyard, his thoughts a steady trickle of uncertainty echoed by the sound of the fountain he sits at. Rata drinks from it, waiting with far more patience than he can find. The white, carved stone that the Imperials have raised to staggering heights cannot hold his gaze for more than an instant. Will is aware of the beauty of the carved stone faces, but inappreciative. They are Imperial faces, with no compassion for his plight. 

Will is dirty and tired, impatient. All the wonders of Imperial splendor, all of their efforts to make the world bow to them, none of it seemed a match for how finding Hannibal would be - and in all of this, Will wanted nothing more than to return to Ró.

He isn't certain when he first began to settle, when Ró had become his unquestionable home. He isn't sure that he would have fought against it, even if he was fully aware of how much it would call to him. It would be better if Hannibal were at his side; the task ahead would not seem so impossibly vast.

He pulls the hood of his cloak up and looks at the world through Wolf's eyes - throught he holes in the tanned and supple pelt where eyes had once been. Will hopes it makes him look fierce and wild.

He sits up on the edge of the fountain and folds his legs into a meditative pose. the marble basin lip makes his ass sore, but Will has a lot of practice at ignoring his discomfort. He closes his eyes, stills his breath, and reaches for the line of fate still running parallel to his own. It slips his grip.

Will takes another deep breath and dives further. The trickling-stream of his thoughts is already slow -exhaustion rendering him sluggish and stillness already threatening to send him to sleep. he waits, measuring his breaths, focusing on Hannibal's fate-line without reaching for it. He thinks of it like grabbing a fish from a stream - one waited with poised muscles and extreme patience until the moment when the water was exactly clear and still. That instant on the edge of sleep, when the body and consciousness either slip down deep into the welcome of rest or jerk suddenly, electrically back to themselves.

Will lunges with his gift, seizing the line like a writhing, slimy eel in his grip, and holds on even as its twisting and bucking shreds the stillness in his mind, past the point where he should be thrown free. Past the point where he should jerk back to wakefulness, thrown out of his own mind like a man off of an untrained horse. 

The sensation is dizzying, then painful - a rush dragging him down suddenly when he won't let go. The fish he has seized is a whale, diving powerfully. It threatens to rip his thoughts apart, peeling away everything superficial, layer by painful layer like a rime stripped achingly from an orange and revealing another skin beneath. It hones and sharpens him; he loses first his thoughts of _future_ and _rescue_ and _how_ , pared down to _Hannibal_ , and some notion of himself. The line yanks Will deeper still, scours more from him until all that exists for him are two concepts: _he must hold on_ and _he must have air_.

The second becomes a driving mantra, pounding out even his sense of self and the fear that, this deep, all his lungs will find is water.

He tightens his grip.

He opens his lungs.

Blackness rushes in and over and concepts die in his mind for a long time. 

Will wakes up in the snow, laying out to the full length of his body in it, shivering violently. He lifts himself off the freezing ground, expelling a shaking breath in a violent cloud. He is on a vast plain of thin trees. Each has two branches - only two, dividing out east and west from the top third of the tree, branches thin and straight.

Will chaffes his hands together, trying to ease warmth back into his stinging fingers. They feel like ice to his palms, his palms feel like ice to his arms. Behind him, there is nothing but endless, snow covered fields, devoid of feature. He turns back toward the strange forest, approaching over the plain with his hands jammed under the opposite arms.

Dead grass crackles under the coating of snow, bent and brown. Will moves forward, compelled to the first tree.

On it, a dark shape hangs, limp and furry, stretched to a startling length. Will thinks at first it is a dog, then he realizes it's a wolf, hung upside down and suspended from loops of rope wound around its hind legs. More rope winds cruelly around it, holding the wolf stretched and confined against the strange, thin tree.

Blood drips from its extended forelegs, from its open mouth and extended tongue. The fur, though black, looks dull and somehow faded, as if instead of being a coat on a living animal it is a pelt left too long in the sun. Dusty.

Will gets close enough to touch, reaching out cautiously. Some aching sympathy sits heavy in his chest, some sharp pain to see the animal hung up this way. He is reaching for the thick fur of its neck when the wolf opens brilliant golden eyes, the only part of it that has not receded into death.

They land, shining, on Will. The tongue makes a weak motion in the open jaws; a gesture of deep thirst and excruciating hunger. Thick, half-clotted blood rolls forth in a wave, dripping slowly from the wolf's incisors into the dirt below.

The golden eyes implore Will, ancient and timeless, for release. This close, Will can see that the forepaws have been nailed in place, one crossed over the other.

A whimpering draws his attention away - and Will discovers that the silent black wolf is not the only one on the field; seven strange trees, seven hung wolves. To the left, a silver-gray animal struggles and twists weakly, blood evident and winding bright in its fur. On the other side an agouti animal hangs defeated, sighing whimpers but otherwise motionless, eyes half closed.

Behind them, more trees, more hung bodies. Seven trees with seven wolves and one empty. Will takes in the picture with a rising hopelessness. The black wolf, with great effort, lifts its head and a growl pours out of it, a spray of blood at the effort the sound takes to issue and droplets spray against Will's face, onto his hands. He's sure that the wolf is about to snap at him, but it is looking at something behind Will. 

His fear mirrors the kind that wakes brightly in the wolf's yellow eyes, dread that sinks into his belly like physical claws, and Will turns slowly, dragged around to face it by some instinct to know what's going to kill him.

The beast is bulging and massive, an animal with seven mouths, seven heads, fourteen eyes. There's no real sense to it, it seems at first glance to be only a massive array of teeth and glinting eyes. Protrusions that may once have been limbs or ears or noses pulse and swell forward out of its body before receding back and appearing somewhere else, an insane tide without a shore.

A mouth appears on the body closest to will, gaping wide and showing canine teeth in a welcoming menace, until Will backs away instinctively. His hands - behind his back as if to defend against any reaching mouths or unexpected paws - encounter the fur of the hanged wolf.

The monster's teeth snap shut, and the corners of the undefined mouth curl up and up, around until the grin nearly touches its tail like a dying serpent. Four eyes materialize from the black mass of the body - none are the same color - and focus on Will with a shine of terrifying intelligence.

"Choose one," it demands - seven voices though none of the mouths open or appear to speak. From the grinning maw nearest Will, an anticipatory breath exhales, hot, against his face. It smells like the sweet, sickening odor of rotting meat, and the lolling tongue has the purple-green sheen of it; even vultures would not touch this poison body.

"What are you?" Will asks. His fingers make a reassuring motion over the shoulders of the suffering animal behind him, feeling that it is still breathing. 

The creature considers his question - it cannot sit back, it is in too much constant flux to have the limbs to organize any definable motion, but it seems to recede a little as it thinks. Will's heart pounds with a little more strength in his chest for every inch it eases back.

"Everything," it says. "Nothing. All possible outcomes of fate. Potential."

It shimmers and ripples, pleased with its own clever answer, an eases forward again, teeth inches from Will's face and eyes bulging out to see him more closely. "And what are _you_?"

"I'm a Seer," Will says. The warmth of the wolf's body eases through his fingers. 

"And are you pleased, now, with what you are _Seeing_?" The voice, many chorded, is coiling and mad. Will is sorry he ever spoke to it. The Beast draws itself up as if in display, towering over Will, over the field of struggling wolves dying or dead on their strange trees.

"No," Will whispers. He can't lie, not even to give the beast the flattery he knows it wants. 

It chuckles and hunkers down again, folding down into the _potential_ it claims to be. This time, Will knows it is the potential for violence.

"Well then, Seer," it says, with a mad glint in its whirling eyes. "Choose one to die."

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -sjau, seven  
> -sorry this is honestly so late today, I forgot it was Sunday!


	28. haf víl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will wakes in his warm bed beneath the furs, with another body pressed close against his, a hot mouth on the back of his neck. Hannibal's long bangs brush intimately over his cheek. Will leans into him, flushed with deep pleasure to find himself back in the comfort of his own bed, with strong arms around his middle. He's sure he's just woken from a strange and terrible dream. Will doesn't remember it now. Not with Hannibal's fingers stroking low and tempting over his belly.

Will wakes in his warm bed beneath the furs, with another body pressed close against his, a hot mouth on the back of his neck. Hannibal's long bangs brush intimately over his cheek. Will leans into him, flushed with deep pleasure to find himself back in the comfort of his own bed, with strong arms around his middle. He's sure he's just woken from a strange and terrible dream. Will doesn't remember it now. Not with Hannibal's fingers stroking low and tempting over his belly.

"Are you awake?" Hannibal murmurs against Will's ear in a playful tone, a teasing skim of his nails over Will's bare stomach.

He wakes faster to half arousal, shifting to spread his knees open. "I'm awake now."

It's still the full dark of night, private and perfect. Will can hear crickets singing outside, feel that the air is only a little cool against his skin. he throws back the covers to give them room to move. Hannibal leans over Will and their mouths meet in a slow, tender kiss. Will reaches up and winds his hands around Hanibal's neck, curling his fingers around the neat braid. He uses this handhold to keep Hannibal from retreating too far, to keep the kiss unbroken for long minutes, save for pauses to breathe. 

Hannibal curls his hand around Will's hardening cock, and he's glad that nothing will interrupt them for once. In some depth of his thought, there is the notion that it has been too long, that Will has missed this.

It can't be right. He and Hannibal have been home for months. It's peacetime - nothing is stopping them. Will shakes off the strange thought and pushes Hannibal over onto his back, shoving him down against the now crumpled furs and yielding bed. He rocks his hips down into Hannibal's grip, demanding, reaching back to return the favor and finding Hannibal hard and full against his palm.

"When will you be back?" Hannibal asks, as they tease each other. There's no real rush yet; they have all night. 

Will has to think about what he means - it's hard to focus on anything but the rough pad of Hannibal's thumb teasing over the head of his cock. It comes up from the depths of his mind. Britta's tribe. Margrit is due soon. Will wants to be there.

"That's up to Margrit," Will suggests. He strokes just a little more firmly, distracting. "You could come with me, you know."

Hannibal doesn't answer. He has been reserved on the whole subject. Instead, he lifts his hands to fish the stoppered vial of oil from amongst the pillows and Will can see the dark marks on his wrists where the scars of his more recent captivity have finally healed again. Will shifts back so their cocks line up, so they can move gently against each other and he covers the marks with his hands, curling his fingers around Hannibal's wrists. 

Hannibal groans softly, letting his eyes close in surrender as he rolls his hips up against Will. Will takes the oil from him, sitting up - but something about Hannibal's open palm catches Will's attention.

At the center, where all the lines on his palm intersect - life and heart and fate - a big scar has blotted them all out, eradicated them beneath tough ridges of healed tissue. A big, round mark. Will both knows and doesn't somehow, that there will be another scar on the back of Hannibal's palm to match.

He sets the lubricant aside and reaches for the injury, blood suddenly cooling.

"What's wrong?" Hannibal asks, his voice seeming to come from very far away.

"Where did you get this?" Will asks, captivated by the new, unfamiliar mark on Hannibal's skin. When he looks up, the world is dark around him and any sensation of contact fades away, leaving Will grabbing for anything around him, trying to ground himself.

There is nothing. No light, no sound, and no other sensation. Will cannot even feel his extremities for a long, maddening moment. 

A woman's voice penetrates the silence dragging Will's attention from the depths though the silence continues for so long after he wonders if he really heard it at all.

"Will." This time, the voice is a child's, high and sweet, coming from behind him. Will turns - and finds himself outside, in brilliant summer sunlight. there is a vast field around him and nearby, Rata looks up from grazing with her jaw working idly as she chews a mouthful of grass.

"Will, over here!"

He turns again on the spot, and finds a child - a young girl with dark curls tied back from her face, watching him curiously with softly glowing blue eyes. She is seated in the grass, with a massive dog leaning protectively over her shoulder.

She's waiting for him. Will's heart makes a slow motion in his chest, turning over and revealing a tender place. warmth. Will goes to the little girl and sits down with her, reaching out to ruffle the dog's fur with a familiar touch.

"What are we learning today?" she asks, looking at him with enthusiasm.

She has already begun to dream, dispelling Will's concern that perhaps a half-Seer would not have the strength of vision or never be as skilled with the Sight. She had it - or, as yet, it had her. Now she just needed to learn the art of harnessing it. 

"Concentration exercises," Will says.

She rolls her eyes, then leans forward on her hands - she's foregone skirts and shifts, instead wearing pants like her first favourite, Alannah. "Why don't you tell my future?"

Will considers her playful gaze, her charming smile, and remembers how laborious his own lessons had seemed. How tiring, when the days were as beautiful as it is now - to spend his time learning rather than playing.

"You really want to know your future?" Will asks carefully. "Can you tell it yourself?"

She shakes her head. "Rinault says you shouldn't look into your own future."

He was teaching her well, despite his lack of real training. Despite - well. Will couldn't really judge the man for mourning. He'd recovered admirably in the years since, but without Antonius, he hardly seemed the same man.

A twinge of guilt moves through Will. He doesn't reach too deeply into the past. It can be as dangerous as the future.

"Well?" she asks. "Is he right?"

"Yes," Will affirms. "You can get-"

"Lost," another voice interrupts. Though his accent remains, Rinault has finally mastered the tribal language.

Will turns around, finding the object of their discussion right behind them, looking down at Will with shining blue eyes. He looks older, more exhausted, but his focus is trained on Will.

The girl gets up from her seat and approaches him with uplifted arms, demanding to be picked up. Rinault obliges, balancing her against his hip, and then they're both looking down at Will with steady, bright gazes.

"Will," Rinault repeats. "You're lost."

Confusion settles over Will at the statement. A sense of deep wrongness, but at the same time, he can't put his finger on it.

"No, I've just come to teach-"

Rinault shakes his head.

How could he be lost? He remembers saying goodbye to Hannibal the night before - as he had every time he came to teach. He remembers taking Rata, and thinking she was moving a little slower these days as he rode the familiar route.

Everything but - everything but _his own child's name_.

"You're out of place," Rinault says. "You can still get back and change this."

"Change-?" Will asks - what is there to change, if he has all this? Or maybe - maybe he doesn't. Maybe this is only an illusion. A possibility that he will lose if he drowns in it. 

"Focus inward," Rinault says. "Look beneath your thoughts."

Even as he speaks, the world seems recede from Will, and he becomes aware of a weakness he wasn't prior. As if his strength is fading away. A ravenous thirst sits perched at the back of his throat, a hollow hunger in Will's belly. The air feels thin. Will sinks down, laying flat in the field - he can smell the crushed grass beneath him - then nothing. Will tries to focus on reaching back instead of forward. Instead of a calm current, his thoughts are disturbed into raging waves.

Will's heart is racing, his thoughts scatter when he reaches for them, and converge when he wants blankness. He tries to reach back, to find the last clear point that he knows is absolutely real.

Somewhere the sound of trickling water calls out to him, waking Will's thirst and making him think of Imperium, all those years ago. Of the many fountains that were all fed by the rushing aqueducts through some clever trick that kept the water coming cool and sweet all the way down from the mountaintops. Was that it?

It was before he'd rescued Hannibal, before the girl was born, before - but he remembers, now. Once, while waiting for Antonius - for a chance to finally rest after their long journey. Will had reached - not for his own future, but Hannibal's. He had held it still and looked even when it resisted. 

Was it then?

Will tries to go back, to shake himself out of his thoughts. He knows, logically, if he's stuck out of time - if he's lost in his own future - then he has to break free. To separate his thought 'then' from 'now'. He breathes deep, trying to focus on the discord between the intruding sensations - thirst, starvation, airlessness - and the current that wants to sweep him away into more of this ideal - only slightly imperfect future. There is the temptation - a very strong one - to just live this life out. To see everything, and know the whole future.

That it is hollow and will never come to be if he dies looking at it seems to be only a very small concern. Distant and distorted, like something at the bottom of a well. 

He draws a breath, and tries to get ahold of those unpleasant feelings, reaching out of the pleasant warmth of summer and back into the cold.

"Will,"

This voice is faint, distant but familiar. He can feel a roughness on his skin, like a cloth pressed against his face.

"Will, come back."

He thinks this voice is different.

"His eyelids are moving."

Rinault's voice again - louder and clearer - Will wants to protest. He's so _close_ to being free, just beneath the surface of his own consciousness and Rinault is distracting him after telling him to step free in the first place.

"Will," this voice is a woman's, unfamiliar.

"Come up now," Antonius' voice. "Or I'll sing you back from the depths with verse."

"That might really kill him," the woman answers.

Will finds his hands attached to his wrists, his lids over his eyes and tries to brush these distractions away - at first it feels like thrashing through water, and then his hand catches - connects with another warm set of fingers.

They curl around his own, and Will feels every aching inch of himself, a shock of pain in his chest and throat becoming a dry cough. 

When he opens his eyes - they feel dry and grainy and the light hurts them at first - he sees both Rinault and Antonius as well as a woman he doesn't know> they are in side, a smallish room cut from white stone and Will is stretched on a bed, covered in blankets. He's holding the woman's hand. 

"Where-?"

Rinault passes him a ceramic cup of water when Will begins coughing again and will empties it greedily. It tastes sweet and cold, and Will wants more of it than the cup seems to allow.

"You're at my estate," Rinault explains. "What's left of it."

Will's eyes can pick out cracks in the plaster walls now, and he can see how faded the woven blankets that cover him are. He drinks another cup of water. 

"What happened?" he asks, his throat finally feeling less dry.

Antonius smiles nervously at him, and Rinault - satisfied that Will isn't going to immediately collapse - leans back. Will can see the last of the faint flue light fading from his eyes before he covers them with a hand and leans back against the wall. _He looks,_ Will thinks, _as tired as I feel._

"I was hoping you'd tell me," Antonius says. "I returned from my errand both flushed and flush with coin, only to find you nearly drowned in the fountain. Your animal - the mule - was making a calamity, and I thought you'd been robbed and drowned when they found you had nothing worth stealing."

Will dimly remembers. "I was trying to look into Hannibal's future."

"Seems you fell into your own," Rinault says, without looking up. 

"I don't understand," the woman says, and Will realize he is still holding her hand. Still grounding himself with touch. He lets go sheepishly, aware of how sweaty his palm seems now that he's had some water.

"I'm a Seer," Will says. "I can, when I want to - or am _compelled_ to - look at the future."

"But Rinault looks only into his own," she says. Her eyes trail up to look at Rinault, and Will realizes this must be his wife, Laura. He feels extremely sluggish to only think of it now. "And he said the other Seers were all gone."

"Seems like it's just me," Will says. "But who can know? It's a bigger world than I thought."

He drags himself up. "I went looking for Hannibal and I think - I think they're going to do something on the Winter Solstice at sunrise."

Rinault startles.

"How long was I unconscious?" Will asks - terrified he has already missed it.

"Four days nearly," Antonius says. "Tomorrow is the winter solstice."

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -haf víl, lost at sea


	29. kross

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will doesn't think his thirst is ever going to recede fully. He drinks until his insides seem to set in motion again and Will needs to relieve himself. Laura vanishes to refill the water pitcher at an opportune moment. 
> 
> "I found where they're keeping Hannibal," Antonius says, while Will aims for the pot. Only the Imperials would see fit to piss inside their own homes. "No real surprise. Mathias went straight home to his father, and he has no reason to hide the fact that he brought in a prisoner of exotic descent."

Will doesn't think his thirst is ever going to recede fully. He drinks until his insides seem to set in motion again and Will needs to relieve himself. Laura vanishes to refill the water pitcher at an opportune moment. 

"I found where they're keeping Hannibal," Antonius says, while Will aims for the pot. Only the Imperials would see fit to piss inside their own homes. "No real surprise. Mathias went straight home to his father, and he has no reason to hide the fact that he brought in a prisoner of exotic descent."

"That's hardly unusual," Rinault agrees. "No one would even notice."

"He hasn't advertised his catch as Lagbrotna," Antonius says. "Everything's been quiet."

"He doesn't want glory," Will says, washing his hands in a shallow basin. It makes him thirsty again. "He wants to take Hannibal's power. I got a glimpse of it."

When he turns, they're both watching him. Will feels frail, scoured out. he isn't hungry, but feels that he should be. He's running on cold fumes, vapors exhaled into the freezing air. Drive will sustain him.

"Strange trees," Will says, closing his eyes. He thinks back, pulling up the image. The beast looms up quickly, laughing with its overabundance of mouths. "They're going to hang him up in a field of them."

"Strange-?" Antonius asks, blinking at Rinault.

"Trees. With only two branches," Will clarifies, looking up to see if there's any recognition. Antonius looks blank, but there is a spark in Rinault's dark gaze.

"A tree with two branches," he says, and holds up his pointer fingers at right angles - one vertical, one horizontal, crossed behind the other. "Like this?"

Will nods.

"They're going to crucify him," Rinault says, looking at Antonius.

"Well that's deeply unpleasant, but certainly an effective way to kill someone," Antonius observes. "And it will take them outside the city."

"No, I don't think it will," Rinault says. "The consul will want more privacy than that."

"Where are Ymir and Brunn? Where's Bávǫrr?" Will asks, feeling some urgency to know a plan is already in motion. They have very little time.

"Getting what we need," Antonius says. "Horses and clothes."

"Clothes?" Will asks.

"The consul lives in the innermost part of the city," Rinault reminds. "No one gets in without a very convincing reason to be there - and we won't seem convincing without looking the part."

"We'd look like thieves," Antonius agrees. "Which, in a sense, we are. Mathias stole Hannibal _first_ , of course, it should be all fair."

Will doesn't think the argument will hold water if they're caught. Better to be gone before any questions are asked. 

"Horses," Will remembers, vaguely, that Antonius had said something about coming with them. "Where are they?"

"I have stables," Rinault says. "Though they've never been so full as now. Your animal keeps letting herself out, but she doesn't go far."

Will smiles, and lets out a low sigh, gathering himself. "We need to get Hannibal tonight."

Rinault and Antonius both nod.

"What's the likelihood of pursuit?" Will asks.

"Lower," Rinault says, "if we kill everyone who sees us."

Antonius snorts. "You're talking about a consul, _amator_."

Rinault weighs that information. "Pursuit either way, but the consul will know where to find us and where we are going. Guards will only know there are killers."

"Are you coming?" Will asks.

"I understood guiding you was my job," Rinault says.

Will shakes his head. "Back to Ardia, are you coming?"

Rinault trades looks with Antonius and Will notices that both have been cut free of their shackles.

"If you promise we'll be free," Antonius answers for him. "We have nothing to stay _here_ for."

"And Laura?" Will asks. "Does she know?"

Rinault smiles. "Your women are more than trophies and decorations. She'll be pleased."

"But you've asked her."

Rinault nods. "She asked _me_. She knows."

"Then we'll need two more horses," Will says.

"Ah, my hard earned profits," Antonius laments. "But your friends are already seeing to it."

"It's the rest of the plan that needs your eyes," Rinault agrees. "If not your Sight."

"What about yours?" Will asks.

"It's of limited use," Rinault admits. His gaze shifts away. "I've seen my part in it."

Will nods. the thought of reaching into the future again is daunting. Will reaches down onto the bed and picks up the black wolf cloak, finding the fur still a little damp at the depths. They've been through a lot together, him and the pelt.

"Come and sit," Rinault invites will and Antonius into the next room. 

The house is bigger than Will is used to, with pale walls in blues and greens, halls and rooms appended in a style that seems to make no sense to him. The longhouses that the tribes built were functionally all the same - big and straight, with rooms built within the walls simply to enclose spaces. Still, for all the immensity, Will does not get the feeling that Rinault is well off - the rooms are bare and undecorated, the furniture functional. They settle at a table well suited for dining.

Antonius fetches a roll of parchment from a wooden cabinet, and unrolls it. A crude diagram of the city is drawn on it, walls outlined around irregular oblong shapes that are the city proper. Main roads are marked out, roughly.

Will sits at the table with the cloak in his lap and looks down at the sheet laid out on the surface. Rinault holds two corners and Antonius weighs the others down with big hunks of rough crystal. 

"Here," Rinault indicates. "Is the consul's estate."

His finger lands on a place in the innermost ring of walls, and traces a rough circle. "Well protected by the Praetorian guards that patrol the area, as well as his own men. Taking him from here will require an extreme effort."

"I saw a whole field of those trees," Will reminds. "And he'll want secrecy, I think. We can rescue Hannibal from there."

"Cruxis," Antonius suggests, an unfamiliar word. "The forest of crosses. Reserved usually for treasoners and the highest class of criminals - bad business for the rich to rot amongst the poor, I guess."

He indicates a shaded circle in the middle of an open area. "It's where they put people they want to make examples of. "

"When they aren't sent off with the army," Rinault adds with a pointed glance at Antonius.

"Put people?" Will asks.

"Executions. The Emperor has several methods. Recently, it's fallen out of favor to have them killed in the coliseum." Rinault's voice is tight, his words concise as possible. Will recognizes the searching and distant look in his eyes as memory.

"Instead, they make a strong cross of two beams and nail them up. They bleed to death or die slowly of cold or thirst. It proves a very distinct point."

A slow, painful death. Will knows that the Harmanic tribes sometimes make offerings to their gods that way - or did, before they came under the heel of the Imperium - but they would hang bulls and dogs, mostly. Not men. leave it to Imperium to take brutality a step further.

"Tomorrow morning," Will says, feeling the moments ticking by. "They'll be there with Hannibal."

"Yes," Rinault agrees. "And we'll be there waiting. Not with the horses - so many would attract attention and slow us down in the city."

Will waits - they have been busy while he's been asleep, and they know the city better than Will.

"They'll wait for us down outside the walls," Rinault draws a line straight down, out on a diagonal straight through the walls.

"How will we get to them?" Will asks.

"It'll be unpleasant," Rinault warns. "And dangerous, but we can..."

He traces a less direct route, zig-zagging his pointer finger between the walls. "Follow the catacombs and sewers underground and get out beneath the walls."

"You know the way?" Will asks.

Rinault nods. That means a party of at least two for Hannibal's rescue - he's betting they'll need Bávǫrr as well. 

"Ymir and Brunn can wait with the horses," Will suggests. "And Laura as well."

"I can what as well?" her voice precedes her through the door and then Laura enters with a freshly drawn pitcher of cool water. She doesn't hesitate to fill cups for each of them.

"Will has suggested you stay outside the walls to help secure our escape route - and means - my dear," Antonius says, charming.

She spares him a glance, but it is only playful disapproval. Will supposes she must know of Rinault's arrangement with Antonius and it must not bother her - or if it does, she'll tolerate it anyway to win her freedom from Imperial society.

"Well," she says, "don't have all the fun without me."

"Our escape route is through the sewers," Antonius points out.

Laura wrinkles her nose attractively and makes no further arguments about going with them. "I saw Barnabus at the fountain drawing water. To boil, he said."

Rinault sits up a little straighter, paying attention.

"The consul _is_ planning something this evening, but that's all I could get out of him," she reveals.

"Is there any sign of the others returning?" Rinault asks.

"I passed that woman in the street. She was getting such looks," Laura sighs. "Also, I think, results. No one will dare say no to her."

"Wise of them," Will says.

"So we'll send Ymir and Brunn with the horses, and my wife as well," Rinault reminds, bringing them back on track.

"Antonius, too," Will says firmly.

Rinault and Antonius both look at him in unison, questioning. 

"The smaller the party we bring with us the less chance to be seen or remarked upon. Fewer people to take through the sewers," Will says. He holds his knowledge of at least one potential future to his chest. "And if anyone notices our men standing around outside the city with a string of horses, someone who can convince them to look the other way will help."

Rinault trades a look with Will, uncertain. An instant of doubt scores itself against Will's soul - what if Rinault had seen and remembered more? What if it was safer to bring Antonius with them? Will pushes the thoughts aside, as heartlessly as he can manage. this is his decision to save Antonius if possible - he does not have Hannibal's gift of guidance to know exactly the right path.

"Well go and take Bávǫrr," he says, with as much authority as he can. No one argues. 

"Then we'd best get into our new clothes," Bávǫrr's voice interrupts the silence that lingers afterward. She appears with a laden basket, loaded with clothing and then hesitates at the sight of Will

"You look like you're half a ghost. You'd best wash up first and hope no one gets too good a look at'cha." She grins. "What'd you See that was so important you had to look at it for days?"

She pulls clothes out of the basket - a set for Rinault, herself, and a pile that she passes to Will. He finds she's chosen well - soft, warm wool that is stitched tightly against the cold they'll face on the way home. He looks up to answer her.

"No, nevermind," she interrupts. "I'll find out soon enough."

Will takes his clothes back to the room to change into them, and hopes that she does not have to find out _exactly_ what he has seen.

-


	30. oblatio

There is no window in Hannibal's cell - the hours of the day become fuzzy and hard to differentiate. They do not check on him - apparently satisfied with his captivity to the point that he only sees a guard twice a day - with his morning and evening meals. He is free to exchange h is makeshift chamberpot at either of those intervals, free to request a little more water if he so desires.

Any other requests fall on deaf ears. Hannibal is left chained in silence; in a strange twilight that never seems to quite reach the full brightness of day or the complete darkness of night. Time is difficult to gauge. 

Hannibal paces his cell, or exercises, or closes his eyes and dreams of home. Restlessness wears away at him, turning his thoughts and soul into a slowly eroding shoreline, a pounding beat of _when, when, when._

When he has an opportunity, Hannibal will take it. He mustn't miss it.

When will the Consul act? What purpose had Matthias' detour served, what was it, exactly, that they were planning to do to extract his powers?

When would Will get here? Hannibal is certain that he's coming, certain that the anticipatory feeling in his chest heralds Will's impending arrival, rather than just the unfounded hope of rescue or the stirrings of madness. He cannot know when; cannot in fact even guess at how much time has passed. When time loses concept in his mind, Hannibal settles down on the dusty pile of hay and thinks back.

He traces the chain of events to this moment, and finds time to wonder exactly what it was - and if it really still mattered - that Will had traded to Britta's tribe. He'd seemed reluctant to talk about it, then. Now, how small it all seems. A whole empire between them and where they were now.

"Ardik," a voice calls into the half-dusk. A change in monotonous schedule. Hannibal's interest and wariness both spike. 

Good Dog enters - he looks like the time off the road has done him some favors. He carries a steaming pail that calls out to Hannibal as if it had Will's own sweet voice - his first bath had been his last proper one. Occasionally, he spared some of his drinking water to wash the worst of the filth off. 

Hannibal gets to his feet and comes to the bars, unable to disguise his interest.

Good Dog sets the bucket down by the front of Hannibal's cell without risking coming into Hannibal's reach, and then nudges it against the bars. It is warm and soapy, with hard yellow soap bobbing at the top.

"This is a change," Hannibal observes. He reaches for the bucket anyway - if Good Dog wanted to drown him, he hardly needed to distract Hannibal with a chance to bathe.

"Your presence is required at dinner," Good Dog tells him. "Sorry to say but if I brought you in with your current state..."

He doesn't, politely, finish the sentence. It's evident to Hannibal the state that he's in. Filthy, stinking, ragged.

But something about the sentence gives him pause, and he hesitates with his hands pushed to the elbows in the warm water. "I'm not sure I like the implication of being invited to dinner."

Good Dog says, "I wouldn't either, in your place."

They'd both been present for enough of Matthias' dropped hints - and it was, after all, Hannibal who had first suggested that Matthias would have to eat him to take his powers.

"They seem to have cooked a proper meal," Good Dog reassures him, but he does not go so far as to promise Hannibal his safety.

Hannibal does not need a promise - just an opportunity - a chance for something different. He crouches at the bars and wets his hair, runs the soap through it until the splitting ends are at least clean. This time, Good Dog waits, watching. his gaze is attentive but disinterested - only making sure Hannibal doesn't attempt anything dangerous - to himself or potentially to Good Dog.

"Why do you work for them?" Hannibal asks - he's starved for conversation, for new input. His voice is rusty.

Good Dog looks guarded, uncertainty clouding his dark face briefly. There is a long moment in which Hannibal knows his intent is being measured. He smiles - he isn't sure if that should reassure Good Dog or not. It doesn't seem to, but he answers anyway, as Hannibal scrubs his face and arms. 

"They owned my family," Good Dog says - no shame in it. "But I was made a freedman with my father. The consul offered to be my patron - now he pays me fair wages. Why shouldn't I work for him?"

Hannibal rinses soap from his face, enjoying the warm water on his hands. "No immediate reason."

He pauses, splashing, considering abandoning any pretense of polite company for a full wash. He decides instead that Matthias and the consul can endure his remaining unpleasantness. Hannibal braids his hair. "But you may find one in forthcoming events."

Good Dog is paying attention, but he makes no comment.

"If you found it beneficial to abandon your post in light of what's coming," Hannibal suggests. "I doubt anyone will remain to question your decision. Not now, but after I'm delivered to the consul's table."

Good Dog is too intelligent to ask why he would consider such a thing. Too Imperial to outright deny that he would take a self-serving path if it meant life over death. His silence gives his answer - he's considering it. He'll weigh his options as they present themselves to him.

Hannibal ties his braid with the old, half-rotten strip of hide he'd arrived with and returns what's left of the soap to the bucket under Good Dog's attentive eye.

"Are you ready?" Good Dog asks.

Hannibal allows that he's as ready as he'll ever be. He doesn't know what's coming or what the ritual - if it's to be a ritual - entails. There is a warm, reassuring sensation enclosed in his ribs that tells him to have faith. He steps back from the bars politely as Good Dog moves up to unlock the door.

Behind that, anticipation. He will - at least for a little while - be free of his cell if not his shackles. These still rattle at his wrists and ankles. He stretches his shoulders like a restless animal and relishes the sound of the lock cranking open.

Good Dog hesitates before swinging the door open, and his dark, suspicious brown eyes take in Hannibal, trying to read how the next few moments will go. 

Hannibal doesn't know either, but there is no drive to strike - just the hesitant, airless feeling of _waiting_.

The door swings open. Good Dog keeps it between himself and Hannibal in the moments when Hannibal steps free - wisely deciding that was when Hannibal is most likely to act up. There is a strong urge, but no compulsion. Instead, he steps free and knows it's his choice to remain tame.

Good Dog guides him out into a moonlit courtyard that is enclosed in the confines of the house - walls on four sides and windows looking down into the kept garden. On one side, a heavy wooden door matches the opposite one they have just emerged from. Good Dog swings the door closed behind him and locks it before he moves to open the next one.

Light pours out, and sound. Music, as if for a party - though there are none of the chattering voices overlaid that Hannibal expects of Imperial parties. A waft of scent reaches him -rich food, cooked meat and hot bread. The promise makes him simultaneously hungry and averse - his stomach has gone so long without proper nourishment.

Inside, there is a massive table in a large hall, draped with fabric and heaped with food - cuts of meat and plates of fruit, loaves of brown bread and oysters. Bones and feathers decorate the table.

A massive feast laid out for no one. Good Dog nudges Hannibal gently inside, toward the table that dominates the room. In one corner, several musicians play soothing music behind a gauzy curtain. For all the opulence on the table, only three place settings are laid. Which one belongs to Hannibal is immediately evident. A big, sturdy wooden chair, covered in straps.

When he turns to resist, Good Dog has already exited the room again. Four larger guards have taken his place and escort Hannibal - now struggling - to his intended seat. He is held down, strapped in, an overabundance of thick leather bands over his arms and legs; his chest and middle.

When they start cutting the remaining rags of his clothing off, Hannibal stops struggling - he would only be giving them an excuse to let his blood. 

Hannibal is left naked, uncomfortable on a hard wooden chair that hold his back rigid, a band around his throat that keeps him very still with its pinching tightness - threatening his ability to breathe. 

He waits a very long time. Until even the warm air seems cool on his bare skin and the soothing music tries his patience. The wait is as calculated a show of power as the set table is.

The consul appears first, pausing to look over the full extent of the presented scene in obvious pleasure at a job well done.

"Well, what a fine spread," the consul says, with a lewd trailing of his eyes over Hannibal's exposed form. Hannibal can do nothing to stop him with his legs strapped to the chair's. "I think I just got hungry."

Matthias slinks in behind his father, eyes intent - he is looking more hungrily a Hannibal. Covetously. He feels no need to gloat like his father does. Victory will be enough for him.

"Welcome to your last supper, Lagbrotna - today we make an offering to you, and in the morning we'll make an offering _of_ you," the consul explains.

Hannibal doesn't answer. It's not worth wasting his air.

"But first," the Consul says, and he picks up a knife from the table, stepping closer to Hannibal. "We need a little something of yours..."

-


	31. hamarr

Will feels a strange, electric current seeming to flow beneath his skin as they pass through the city in the late evening. Every moment seems to rush and stretch in a vibrating world outside of his reach. The sun has set when they reach the last gate and Rinault begins to talk them through. The sky is still vivid with the last remnants of sunset, and will looks at the clouds and tries to seem calm.

What if he's gotten the wrong date? What if Hannibal is already dead or locked somewhere beyond where they can reach? He's so close, and yet it still seems impossibly distant.

Will's entire body shakes with his near exhaustion, and he pulls the cloak - he has refused to be parted from it - closer around his shoulders. There are a pair of tall and fearsome guards at the heavy gate into the innermost section of the city, with gleaming helmets and breastplates made of copper, and red-dyed horsehair crests, brilliant red cloaks. They don't give the three of them a second glance as the three of them pass through into the innermost sanctuary of the city.

Bávǫrr has pulled her hair back tight under a cap and dressed herself as a man, keeping herself stern and solemn in the guise of a bodyguard.

"I hope my friend does not find himself in any trouble," Rinault says, absently, as they move through the wide, evenly paved streets.

"Your friend?" Will asks.

"I said we were visiting a friend I once had," Rinault explains. "To seek a patronage, since I've fallen on such hard times."

Will nods. It got them through, it was a good enough story.

"Rinault, you have a friend up this high?" Bávǫrr asks, looking up at the massive houses and columned buildings that surround them. Will cannot imagine any use for so much space - nearly half of Ro would fit beneath the footprints of some estates.

"Does that surprise you?" Rinault asks her.

"A little bit, yeah," she says, unapologetically.

Rinault points up the hill some, a direction off the course of where they are headed. "I used to live over there." 

She snorts, and he smiles with a sad twist to his expression. 

"When I was very young, there was a coup - an attempted one. seats on the consulate can only belong to so many men at a time, and the power makes many enemies."

Bávǫrr listens quietly as Rinault leads them confidently into the heart of the district. "My grandfather inherited such a seat from his father, and became a very powerful man.

"Unfortunately, there are many such powerful men - too many, some say, or not enough. They often bring their petty disputes all the way into law."

Will thinks of the city below them, of the obvious differences in how poor men and rich men lived. He sees in this the results of such power being used only for personal gains. 

"There was trouble eventually," Rinault continues. "A priest became a member of the consulate and quickly won - or bullied - allegiances from the others. When my grandfather refused, the priest began to block all of his actions. He could not buy or sell property, no one would come to him for patronage. He became an outcast. Forsaken, it was said, by the gods themselves."

A very poor priest to use both his religious sway and political powers to ruin anyone who disagreed with him. Will thinks that this story - though it is told with in measured cadence and a hushed tone - is about a central moment, a crucial point in Rinault's life.

"In a fit of madness, they say, my family struck out at the priest. My grandfather killed him. They found him with the bloody knife in hand, unable to escape," Rinault's gaze is fixed straight ahead on his path. Will can see, now, the silhouettes of those strange trees from his dreams - crosses raised toward the sky like giant swords plunged into the earth and just as bloody.

"He had stabbed his own thigh in his frenzy," Rinault finishes grimly. "The trial was short. Though he swore he acted alone, another consul accused the rest of the family as collaborators."

The cruxis - the forest of crosses as Antonius had described it - is prominent, set up at the intersection of several streets. It is not the art or fountains that are so prominent in the rest of the city, but Will suddenly realizes the message is the same.

All of it is a warning about the power held over these people by the very concept of Imperium. 

"They hung here for two weeks after they were publicly executed between gladiator fights," Rinault says, his tone grim. "What was left of them.I was too young to be involved, and the Emperor allowed me to watch from his box."

There are bodies on the crosses, still and thin. Will's heart gives an anxious lurch as the sickly smell of rot reaches him - but these are very old. Thick nails are driven through at the palms and wrists, holding the raven-picked and decomposing remains in place with their arms outstretched.

"So that I would know he had been _kind_ to me," Rinault concludes, looking up at the nearest corpse. It leers down at him with blackened lips peeled back from bared and bloody teeth, and holes where once had been eyes. Neither flinches away.

Will wonders which is the more unlucky - Rinault's life seems charmed or cursed, no matter how much he tried to seize control of it.

Much like Will's. Rinault will fit in well with his new home.

"Afterward, I was allowed to continue to try and live. My betrothal to Laura was carried out," he skirts between the crosses to a small planted area in the center - Will thinks at first it is a strange place for a garden, and then he sees it is a hedge that surrounds a small square in the center.

In the middle, a pile of gnawed human bones lays in a jumble.

"What is this?" Will asks, horrified. "I thought it was customary for your dead to be buried?"

Rinault lets himself gingerly through the hedge, his feet sliding on rolling bones. He catches himself. "This isn't about custom, Will. It's humiliation. A deterrent."

Will accepts his broad hand as he steps through - Bávǫrr simply muscles through beside them.

"Sure," she says. "When the family dog drags home a human thigh bone, it's impossible to not think how easily it could be you."

Rinault nods. "No plans hatch without full awareness of the consequences."

"If they catch us," Bávǫrr says as they all hunker down to wait. "They won't have to take us far to punish us."

"They won't catch us," Will says, casting his eyes toward an empty cross. "They have other things on their minds."

When he sits, he has to brush bones out of the way. A skull glares accusingly at him out of empty eye-sockets as it rolls away, revealing a tangle of tiny white-bleached bones and fragments beneath. 

A thought occurs to Will then, a question about a specific puzzle piece. He watches the pathway through the dismal forest of thin crosses, and keeps his voice to a whisper.

"Which consul was it?" Will asks, and then clarifies. "That condemned your family, Rinault?"

Dark brown eyes meet Will's steadily, in the bright moonlight. "You'll meet him soon enough."

Will does not feel much pride for guessing correctly. He won't interfere with Rinault's revenge, if the opportunity arises. He says nothing else, and they wait in long silence. Several patrols pass within earshot, but none seem interested in getting any closer to Cruxis.

Will's muscles protest remaining crouched for so long, and the pangs of hunger at last begin to creep in distantly, though he never once loses his focus.

Well after the moon has begun to set again, Rinault makes a signal - and will can hear voices approaching. The night has gotten very cold. Will draws his dagger and pulls up his hood. 

_They're just men_ , he reminds himself as he crouches to make ready. _You've faced much worse._

Bávǫrr sets an arrow to string and Will peers out through the small gaps in the trees. The voices are accompanied by a heavy, dragging sound; wood clattering over stones.

"Bring him over," a voice orders in the Imperial tongue. Will tenses, in the moments before action, vision limited through the eye holes of the wolf cloak. It makes the world just small enough to handle.

The sound of something heavy hitting the ground, of men struggling.

Rinault has the best view but Will can see the new empty cross hit the ground. He sees two big men hold a third, reeling, against the beams.

Rinault slips through the bushes, Will just on his heels, hand tight on his knife hilt. There are four men standing over Hannibal's prone figure on the cross, two holding him down and two straight and standing over them, holding tools.

One of them is Mathias.

"Hold him still," the other man is saying.

Will and Rinault creep silently across the grass beneath the crosses.

"Yes, that's it," the man says. He is heavier, in purple robes. Will thinks there is red paint or blood on his face. He drops down suddenly over Hannibal's chest and uses his weight to help stop his struggling. One of the other men pins Hannibal's hands against the intersecting point of the cross, one over the other.

"I dedicate this sacrifice," the Consul says, raising a hammer high over his head as if to call down the attention of whatever God he's invoking.

Will's world turns into a red blur, and he abandons stealth to run - the hammer is descending in a great, wide-sweeping motion toward the nail the Consul is holding in place, point down against Hannibal's palms.

He is aware, dimly, of the arrow flying past him and sinking into the guard holding Hannibal's legs still. The hammer drives the nail all the way through Hannibal's palms with only one blow - Hannibal stifles a cry of pain as best he can, but Will can hear his agony as he drives his knife home in the guard's back, feeling the impact as if it were a nail driven through his own palms.


	32. beinahrúga

Will's world narrows in focus to the smell of blood and the sounds of struggle. He is dimly aware that Rinault and the Consul are fighting nearby, the hammer swinging and the sound it makes when it impacts Rinault's short sword.

He is too busy with his own fight to pay more attention. The guard bucks up against his knife, attempting to dislodge Will and tearing the weapon from his hands. It is already too late, the damage already done, but Will loses moments as he struggles to reclaim the weapon from the thrashing, struggling guard.

Will's hands come away sticky and wet with blood, and the guard stumbles out of reach, twisting around and around in an attempt to pull the knife out of his back.

Will lets him go, moving to recover Hannibal - all this time apart and he's so _close_ \- to curl his hands blindly over the thick, half-driven nail sunk through Hannibal's palms and pull.

"Will."

He can feel the voice and breath against his side, but Will can't look at anything but how much blood is pouring from Hannibal's changed hands, how painful the intersection of nail and flesh must be. He pulls, but his hands are slippery, the nail is slick.

"Will," Hannibal repeats.

The sounds of combat grow closer, and Will hears another arrow fly. He pries at the iron spike, winching his bloody fingers closed around it until the pressure of it aches in his own palm, until the roughly cut square head scrapes and cuts his hand. He doesn't let himself loosen his hold.

A gasp - a thud. Agonized groaning. Will doesn't look up. The nail inches up with an excruciatingly small motion. Will pulls until the muscles in his forearms scream for relief, until he can feel his own blood joining Hannibal's.

Then the nail comes fully free with a rush of blood welling up after. The sudden loss of resistance sends Will crashing backwards, with the nail gripped tightly in both hands.

Before he can hit the ground, strong arms come up around Will's neck, yanking him back, pulling him away from Hannibal. Arms as strong as iron bands wrap around his chest and neck, one hand curling under his chin to restrain him.

"I knew you'd come," Matthias says against Will's ear. "I knew we'd get both of you."

His voice doesn't quite sound like his own, maybe dropped an octave into a growl as Will struggles against his hold. But there is something deeper, more familiar about it. A madness and multiplication of tone.

"Give up," Matthias whispers enticingly against his ear. "You've lost. Maybe not at this second, but it is coming. You can't protect them. _He_ can't protect them. Look at him!"

Mathias jerks Will's chin around to make him look down at Hannibal on the cross - he's struggling with the ropes binding his legs, with damaged and uncooperative hands. _Something_ is wrong with the shape of his left hand, pulling at the knots.

Matthias jerks Will's chin again, around and up. "His time is past. All that confidence, all that power - and he found a stronger tether than the pull of the gods. A better reason to be still than active."

His laughter is very nearly a bark. "He can't have you anymore."

Will gets both his hands on the thick iron nail and braces himself.

_Choose one to die_ a whispering sound in the back of Will's mind - or maybe Matthias has said it aloud in his ear. Will jams the nail deep into his side, and feels it stick on something before he yanks it free again.

"I choose you to die," he hisses, plunging it deep into Matthias' body again.

Matthias' grip tightens on his neck, nails cutting his skin as he fights to squeeze the breath out of Will.

_Wrong decision._

In the struggle, the words are only a snarling whisper in the back of Will's mind. There are seven possibilities, seven choices Potential offers. Will is struggling now against a weakening Matthias, fighting like the wolf whose skin he wears, fighting not to be the one that Potential takes.

Then Hannibal is at his side again - at _last_ \- and with Will's knife in his hand. He says nothing, but Will recognizes the determination in his movements and even when Matthias tries to pull Will up as a shield, he feels no fear. 

"You can't-" is all Matthias gets to say before Hannibal throws the knife with unerring precision. Blood splashes Will's cheek.

Hannibal's left hand is missing two fingers, and there is a hole in the center that is ragged and bleeding, the same as the palm of his right. Will feels a surge of blind, protective rage at the sight and rounds on Matthias even as the grip goes slack on his neck. 

Will finds the knife in his neck and does not pull it free so much as complete the cut, snarling and angry. More hot blood splashes on his hands, and Will wonders how many people he will wound and wear this evening.

He turns to look at the world through wolf's eyes for the next challenge, knife raised and teeth bared.

He finds instead four sets of eyes watching him - and for a moment he thinks the creature he'd dreamed has slithered into the world as something real and manifest, but it is only his companions in the darkness.

Bávǫrr has reclaimed her fired arrows, intent not to leave behind any signs that might lead too quickly to their discovery. Rinault is clutching his arm, sweating and pale but clearly victorious. His sword is still with the Consul.

Their enemies are all dead, a scatter of bodies over the green grass beneath the crosses. Will has an idea.

"Raise the cross," he tells Bávǫrr. "Let's put the bodies in the boneyard."

Hannibal smiles, and Will returns the expression - he must lead now, and they have to hurry. As much as he wants to put his arms around Hannibal and just feel him, solid, real and breathing, there's no time yet.

They drag the remains to the hedge wall and lift the bodies over, upsetting a scurry of rats and other scavengers. The consul and his son will not go unattended for long. Will finds some satisfaction in that.

"Which way?" he asks Rinault, wiping the worst of the blood on the consul's shirt. Hannibal is already moving, turning suddenly on his heel and following some beckon that none of the others can hear.

"That way," Rinault says, holding his arm and indicating the direction Hannibal is going.

"Hurry," Hannibal calls. Will trots after, trusting Hannibal's instincts and then - suddenly - worried about the others. Potential has demanded a sacrifice, and Will's companions are injured but alive and out of danger.

Now Hannibal's gift was dragging them toward a fate, toward the others who were out risk and were their means of escape. No way to know if Hannibal sought to make fate or break it.

He leads them unerringly toward the wall, toward a stone archway that is roughly chest high to a man, into which knee high water and filth runs. 

Will covers his nose and mouth with his hand to block some of the reek.

" _This_ is our exit?" Bávǫrr hisses at Rinault.

"The first part of it," he admits, apologetically.

Will grabs Hannibal before he drops into the sewage channel.

"We have to hurry," Hannibal tells him.

"Your hands," Will hisses in answer, remembering Hannibal's mortification at the thought of losing a limb.

They bind Hannibal's injuries as best they can with strips torn from their finery - now bloodied and soiled. Will mutters an apology for Antonius' efforts under his breath and hopes the man is alive to complain about it.

Hannibal is still the first to drop into the poison water, to crouch down into the black space beneath the wall. He does not need to feel his way through the blackness with his hands, Will thinks, his own pressed against the slime-covered wall to his left. There's relief in that - those open wounds would invite in sickness.

He can hear Rinault behind them, counting footsteps. The wall is thicker than Will expects - he had thought they would pass beneath it and out again into the streets, but sit seems to wind down beneath the city instead, descending.

Ahead of him, Hannibal turns suddenly. Will is aware that he can stand straight again, that a chamber has opened up around them. Hannibal steps up onto a raised edge, finding a door unerringly in the total darkness.

"Where are you going?" Rinault asks, as Hannibal guides them through it.

"This is the right way," is all Hannibal says

The room beyond is completely dark, but dry of sewage save what they track in. When Hannibal closes the door again, the air seems to immediately grow fresher.

"Better to follow the sewer than the catacombs," Rinault warns. "There's too many passages that lead only to bones and I don't know the way."

Hannibal doesn't answer. Rinault makes no further arguments into the darkness. They simply join hands in a chain, Hannibal to Will to Bávǫrr to Rinault. Their footsteps echo and chase in the blackness and Will thinks of how he had seemed to float, unmoored, in the space between his dreams.

He is aware of taking turns and passing through doorways and hallways, unseen in the blackness. Time is passing, but it's impossible to tell how much - once, he stumbles over something round and hollow that clatters away underfoot.

Once, he steps on something that shrieks in animal pain and moves underfoot, leaving chilling echoes of its voice behind long after it has fled.

Will's heart hammers, his grip tight on Hannibal's bandaged palm and he hears Rinault swearing in the Imperial tongue behind them. 

"Just a rat," Bávǫrr assures them

Rinault swears again, unhappily. "These rats eat human flesh and little else."

Will is aware, then, that there is a faint flickering light ahead, low to the ground. It's not daylight but torchlight, he thinks. In the furthest gray reaches of its illumination he can see that the walls are lined with bones - thousands of them, stacked together, all around them. 

-


	33. einn

Hannibal is headed straight for the flickering light, his bound hand extended back toward Will, open-palmed. Will turns over his knife without complaint, pressing the handle carefully into Hannibal's palm.

Bávǫrr sets an arrow to string. The light is passing through a doorway ahead, reaching fingers of flickering light out into the chamber they're standing in. Hannibal crouches as he approaches the arch - Will can see another chamber beyond, lined with alcoves in which remains lie in repose - hundreds of bodies. 

It is an entire city of skeletons, Will thinks - a place that chews up lives and holds even the expended bodies of its citizens within. A construct of rotting bodies well hidden beneath an exterior that pretends at life. 

Hannibal rounds the corner and pauses, and Will follows just behind him to watch his back, Rinault with his sword drawn on his heels. 

The torch is lying on the floor, guttering and spilled from the struggling and extended hands of a prone figure. A gasping, harsh sound of breath is echoing in the darkness. There is a second figure in the room, weapon raised high and triumphant over the downed man. Will thinks there is something familiar about the man on the floor - something in the cut and color of his disheveled hair.

How did these two come to be fighting here, so far beneath the city and so lost in this labyrinth of the dead? Will supposes, as Hannibal moves toward the second figure - cloaked and hooded, but Will is fairly certain it's a woman - who is crouching down over the first in a strange and threatening embrace.

_She's going to break his neck!_

Hannibal lunges at the same moment, and by some instinct she senses him in time to dodge his stab. When she whirls out of the way, his knife does not so much as cut her cloak. 

On the ground, the prone figure struggles to lift himself, an agonizing slowness to his motion that implies pain when he lifts his head. Will's heart goes cold and silent.

"Antonius," Rinault sighs out behind him, desperate. It is a curse or a plea. Will isn't mistaken.

Rinault pushes past him, urgent, leaving his sword to the side and pulling Antonius up against him - earning a low, agonized moan. Antonius seems limp and uncoordinated in the guttering light, and Will can see dark streaks of blood on his face, pouring from his scalp. He is moving weakly and still alive when Will looks back toward the fight.

This, he has never seen anything like - Hannibal's motions have the utmost assurance of being guided, his eyes the determined set that says he is _listening_ , that his actions are backed by the gods themselves to keep the world on track for their designs.

He isn't winning.

The woman matches him turn for turn, stroke for stroke with her own weapon - not a sword but a heavy, square club. Will thinks it is stone - like the massive tools used to grind wheat in big stone bowls for bread. Her smile is bright under the dark hood, and Will realizes her skin is brown, that the shadows seem to touch it more readily than the rest of the room.

She meets his gaze from across the space, and some trick of the light shows only a gleam of reflection to him, two bright spots displaced in shadow. She does not need to pay attention to Hannibal - to the fight. She needs only _listen_.

Will scrambles toward Antonius, knowing he has somehow assigned this injury - this _threat_ to him by refusing to choose. Potential has stepped in to remind him.

Rinault is on the floor with the poet in his lap, hands seeking and testing the injury to Antonius' head, cradling his body close in a protective way. His fingers come away bloody. Will can't bear to watch the agony of realization dawn on him - Antonius moves weakly, desperate in a heartbreaking way to escape his fate. His fingers have wound their way, pulling, into Rinault's shirt, his eyes fixed unsettlingly on some distance, half terror and half arousal by the drunken set of his mismatched pupils. One is blown wide, the other fixed and contracted. Will has seen it in dying men with broken skulls and damaged thoughts.

When he reaches for a pulse he finds the heartbeat slow, though his motions seems sluggishly frantic, at odds with how he gasps for breath, muttering and pulling at Rinault's shirt.

_Choose one,_ the laughing voice in the back of Will's mind demands, and he feels the heartbeat under his fingertips flutter at the same moment he remembers Antonius' simple request to be free - of chains, of the Imperium, of his past.

Will looks up - the fight is still strong, though Hannibal must be paying for it. The will of one god attempting to break a fate willed by another. Hannibal is injured, thin - starved and exhausted and armed only with a dagger. Perhaps Antonius will not live long enough for Hannibal to break his fate, to stop it like a slowly descending blade.

Perhaps he can't.

In his mind's eye, will is standing again in Cruxis, the forest of crosses.

"Antonius," Rinault says, lowly, over the sounds of combat, coaxing. "A poem, please. Stay with us."

Will can't see the room around him anymore, only the field and the crosses and the wolves, hanging again. The agouti colored animal is whimpering, blood pouring from its mouth as it makes helpless, mindless motions to pull free of the cross. Seven wolves. Eight crosses.

_Choose one._

In the winter-covered forest his breath clouds and fogs and there is only the sensation of cold snow under his feet.

A silver wolf howls and howls in the oncoming dark, lonely and unanswered in the cold.

_Choose one._

It's not right. Will had dreamed a black wolf left to howl. It wasn't right.

In the depths of his vision, a wordless gasp reaches him. One word in Imperial penetrates, weakly spoken, drifting and distant like a child's daydream; 'amator.'

_Choose. ___

__Will opens his eyes and looks down at Antonius but he can't bring himself to look up at Hannibal. He makes his decision - feels it - and steels himself to it._ _

__"I choose the empty cross," he mutters, closing his eyes, trying to block the sounds around him, to drown out the soothing words Rinault is speaking, the tight agonized quality of his voice. He thinks it with more conviction, trying to convince himself it isn't too late._ _

__To make the black god hear him over the clashing combat and his own hammering pulse._ _

___I choose the empty cross!_ _ _

__He knows he has been heard. for a moment he fades down into darkness and the world recedes around him, all seeming to look into him - not the part of Will that was his body but down deeper into his being. To the hard place that has formed at the center of his soul._ _

__One mouth grows in the mad-eyed darkness, uncurling into fangs and a blood-red tongue. "Are you sure?"_ _

__Will does not think of Hannibal. He doesn't let his conviction falter. He finds that his resolve has become a formidable and terrifying thing to carry him so far and so long to save Hannibal. He doesn't have to answer. He feels it - the certainty his freedom has brought him to - and the creature _knows_. The gaping maw stretches into a big smile._ _

___VERY WELL._ _ _

__Will closes his thoughts again but he cannot shut out the awareness of the presence around and through him. Only now, with the decision made, does he think of Hannibal._ _

__He is sorry he could not see him become king - but will is sure that _now_ he will rally the tribes, that he will claim lineage for Margrit's child and secure the rights for an adopted line._ _

__"Will," A woman's voice calls him, unfamiliar. For a moment, he wonders if it is his mother. Then there is nothing. He becomes aware of hard stone beneath his hands and knees, and then a crash and clattering sound. A low muttering stream of assurances - in Imperial tongue - over a weak protest of confusion in two different languages._ _

__Another crash in the darkness, then a gasp. Retreating footsteps._ _

__"Will," the voice repeats, raised. "We have to-"_ _

__"Let her go," Hannibal says_ _

__They are in the catacombs. The torch has gone out. Will can hear Antonius and Rinault very near - he reaches out and feels the pulse beneath Antonius' collar - quick, but steady. He is warm, but not burning with fever. For now - for at least the next few hours - he will survive._ _

__"She lost," Hannibal says. "Her god was not strong enough today."_ _

__" _What_?" Bávǫrr asks._ _

__"I was the stronger playing piece," Hannibal answers, cryptically. His next question is a little louder. "Will?"_ _

__"Yes?" Will answers. He is surprised to find his voice working._ _

__"Who is he?" Hannibal is moving closer. Will reaches for him. Their hands join in the dark, and Will can feel the hot wetness of blood between their palms._ _

__"Antonius," Will says. "He's one of ours."_ _

__"He almost became one of _hers_ ," Hannibal says. "Can he be moved?"_ _

__"He's been hit in the head with that weapon of hers," Rinault says. "I think his skull is whole, but..."_ _

__"It must be whole," Antonius says, in a wavering tone. "Or what's inside would have pounded its way out."_ _

__His voice pauses. When it starts again, Will thinks he recognizes the opening lines of lewd poetry of Antonius' own composition._ _

__"We'll have to keep moving," Hannibal says, over the litany._ _

__"I'll carry him," Rinault says quickly, before anyone can suggest they would be better to leave Antonius behind._ _

__Will wouldn't have let them._ _

__"Come on," Rinault murmurs in the dark, and then groans with the effort of lifting Antonius. "Can we light the torch again?"_ _

__"I can find my way in the dark," Hannibal says._ _

__"The rest of us would feel more comfortable with a little light," Bávǫrr says._ _

__Will works his hands over the floor, then pulls his fingers back sharply when they encounter the too-hot remains of the recently extinguished torch. Touching his scorched fingertips to his lips, Will recovers the torch with his other hand._ _

__"I have it," he says, around the burnt oil and blood taste of his fingertips._ _

__A spark strikes in the blackness, revealing his companions and in the far reaches, white shining skulls. Will hands the torch up to Bávǫrr so she can light it._ _

__No one would have found Antonius' body down here, not until it was the same as the remains surrounding them. Only Lagbrotna could have done it - and then broken fate. Driven off the other agent - if that's what she was._ _

__It's the only explanation Will has for why there wasn't one more body down here in the depths beneath the city._ _

__His own._ _

__-_ _


	34. staðfesta

Will's eyes keep trailing back to Rinault and Antonius, to how careful Rinault is in choosing his path - he lags behind the others as Hannibal arrowss onwards. Dan has passed on to the heat of the day, and Hannibal hurries them onward, asking Illrhundr for a speed the rest of them are forced to match.

Will hasn't seen any sign of pursuit, but he trusts Hannibal's instincts. He just hopes that the pace will not prove too much for Antonius, that his injury is not as grave as it had seemed in the catacombs. 

Ymir and Brunn have ranged - ahead and behind to watch for pursuit or ambush, and Hannibal has chosen to abandon the roads for now. It leaves Will alone with Bávǫrr and his thoughts, somewhere in the middle. Nothing quite feels real yet - though hours have passed since Hannibal's rescue, and Will can see him. Thinner and ragged but free, racing ahead of them to lead the way.

Will wants to stop, to catch his breath and let events start to make sense in his mind. More than any of that, he wants to put his arms around Hannibal and feel that he is real and mostly whole, to feel him breathing until the concept that they are both alive and together again solidifies in his mind.

Hannibal changes direction sharply, perhaps as misdirection for any pursuit or simply because he's been pulled in a new direction. Their path plunges them into a quick stream where pebbles shift and roll under the hooves of the horses and Hannibal must slow down. They must not lose their scouts as well as their pursuit.

"Where's he going?" Bávǫrr asks Will, as Rata drinks greedily from the cold, flowing water.

Will shakes his head - he doesn't know.

"We need to stop soon," Laura pauses at Will's other side, after covering the distance between them at a risky trot that splashed up chilly water.

Will looks back - Antonius looks ashen gray on the horse in front of Rinault, and thought he animal was clearly bred larger - for war or farm work, the effort of carrying an extra rider at such a pace was clear.

Hannibal, too, needed attention. Better than the hasty covers on his hands. Will has not eaten, he realizes with a pang, in some days. They are a party running on the ragged edge of desperation and very little else.

"We need a place to hide," Will says, looking askance at Laura.

"We're halfway between nowhere and the ocean," she says, thinking. "But maybe..."

"Maybe?" Will prompts.

"This land was settled," she explains, "but before we defeated the Harmanics, they came this far south and burned as they went. The Emperor hasn't re-awarded this land, but we may find an old farmstead - or a barn, perhaps."

The land around them looks wild, the trees mostly young and short - aside from a few scattered and ugly methuselahs barely clinging to their leaves. It does not seem promising for cover.

"Will Rinault know?" Will asks.

She nods. Will feels grateful for his presence, for the support in this strange land that might mean they don't have to run flat out from one end of it to the other.

Will puts his heels to Rata's sides, sending Laura back to confer with her husband while he takes on the task of convincing Hannibal. When Will approaches, Hannibal holds up for him, looking back as if noticing the rest of their party for the first time.

"Hannibal, we need to rest," Will says, worried that he won't be able to convince him. He can't blame Hannibal for wanting to get out of the Empire as soon as possible, but they will be stuck for some time yet riding through it, and they had hurts and exhaustion to see to.

"I'm looking for a safe place," Hannibal says, eyes scanning the group as they all draw up. His gaze lingers on Antonius the longest, taking in his muttering and pallor. 

"I know one," Rinault says. "Just upriver and to one side. It will be harder to hide the horses, but it will serve us for shelter and a place to gather ourselves."

Hannibal considers Rinault with a cool and lingering gaze. He's had little use for Imperials lately. Then his hands seem to demand his attention at last, brown stained bandages and the left strangely truncated now. He rubs absently against the remaining stumps. 

"Show us," he says.

Rinault leads them true, and for just an instant Will thinks he sees the shine of blue in his dark eyes as he turns through a thick tangle of undergrowth between the young trees. 

The house is burnt at only one corner, but at all the others plants have begun to overtake it. As if some enemy had begun to burn it but not stayed to finish the job. 

Inside, the shadows are heavy and the old smell of smoke still lingers, dull and stale in the dusty air, but it will shelter and hide them. In places, the roof has fallen in and blooming vines have claimed the floor. Nothing else remains to show sign of who once lived here and felt safe.

As Will helps Laura lay blankets out on the floor, he wonders if anyone survived and where they are now. He wondered if anyone still thought of this place, the way Will remembers his own home, now far away.

Will dust have settled so thickly in the longhouse, before they can return to it?

They lay Antonius flat on one of the blankets, and he looks less ashen now that he is no longer subjected to the constant motion of riding.

"How's your head?" Will asks him in a soft tone, when Antonius blinks his eyes open. Will knows such wounds can addle a man - sometimes permanently, if they survived the initial injury.

"If it's not shattered," Antonius whispers, and then pauses, struggling to lift his hand to his brow to shut light out of his eyes. "Then, I feel an explanation for all this pain is owed."

Will thinks he will survive, then, if he takes no fever. The damage is uncertain.  
"It is not shattered," Rinault assures Antonius. "But the scar will be very handsome."

"I shall be certain to approach those I intend to woo by walking backwards," Antonius says, quiet. He winces when Laura begins washing the blood out of his hair to clean the wound - it _will_ scar, perhaps not handsomely, but the split at least seems straight and clean, describing one corner of the woman's strange weapon in two perfect, intersecting lines. It must have only been a glancing blow, or the damage would have been complete.

"Why were you down there?" Will asks, and earns a peeking glance from between Antonius' fingers.

"Rinault always got lost," he says, simply, and seems to think the matter settled.

Will leaves his care to Rinault and Laura and goes to Hannibal instead - he doubts Bávǫrr will offer to aid him. Hannibal is carefully unwinding the bandage from his right palm with his clumsy and shortened left hand.

Will settles in front of him, folding his knees onto the soft blanket and feeling the plants giving way below it. He covers both of Hannibal's hands gently between his own and leans over them, pressing a kiss to Hannibal's lips, reassuring himself that Hannibal is here; alive and breathing.

"Let me," Will says, taking Hannibal's hands into his lap.

"How did you find me?" Hannibal asks.

"By watching your future some," Will says. He is careful with the last layers of cloth, but some of the scab comes away from Hannibal's palm anyway.

The blood is red and healthy, and the wound looks to have struck clean through. It's ugly, and Will can see the damaged bones and muscle, but it shows no sign of infection. Will cleans it carefully with good water anyway, front and back, talking as he works.

"I had guides and help for the rest," Will explains, with a glance toward the other side of the farm house. "Rinault can See a little, too."

That catches Hannibal's attention, causing him to look again at their companions.

"They knew where you were kept and enough about the city to get me to where you'd be found," Will says. "How did you know I would come?"

"How could I guess otherwise?" Hannibal asks Will in turn. "I knew it would hardly be Fredrik."

Will laughs in spite of himself and the dire situation. For the first time in a long time, he has what he wants. The burden of leadership - Will truly thinks of it as such - will soon be off his shoulders.

When the wound is clean, Will covers it again, binding Hannibal's hand against a flat wooden splint produced from the supplies purchased by Bávǫrr.

"Not so tight," Hannibal protests, "so I can hold a sword."

Will shakes his head. "It's broken. Let it heal or you may never hold a sword properly again. Let me see the other."

Hannibal submits his left hand to will's demand, and Will takes his time here - first with the severed fingers, lost entirely at the very first joint.

"What happened?" Will asks.

"They needed them," Hannibal says, looking down at the damage as Will cradles his hand between his own. "Or so they said."

Will looks at the ragged stumps with concern, wishing he could have spared Hannibal this. Hannibal closes his remaining fingers around Will's hand reassuringly.

"Don't worry," Hannibal tells him. "It's all they took."

He still has his power, he means - having regained it, if he ever really lost it.

"I hope that means we're being called home," Will says. He's tired of the Imperium, of being so far from everything familiar and so worried about what they have missed. 

Will wraps Hannibal's injury with careful attention, and then checks him over the rest of the way, attentive. Hannibal doesn't offer any protest for Will's fussing and prodding. 

"We must endure the whims of the gods to enjoy their protections," Hannibal says in a calm tone. "We've learned that they are opposed by others."

Will looks back at Antonius, remembering the hissing voice in his ear commanding him to choose.

"If they have their own gods, why were they trying to take the blessing from yours?"

"To make their own take notice," Hannibal says, but he does not sound sure. "Whatever we ran into down there, she carried a will like I do."

"Another Lagbrotna?" Will asks, disliking the notion. He looks toward the door, suddenly nervous. "Will she come after us?"

"I'm not sure," Hannibal admits. He flexes his hand, and then takes the bowl that Bávǫrr offers him. She pushes one at Will as well, and it's only thin broth but it's hot and Will drinks it all, still hungry afterward.

"It depends what her god demands," Hannibal says. "And how well we're guided."

Will hopes it's well. He fishes in his pack for further food, hunger woken and exhaustion trailing just behind. He wants to eat and then sleep and hope that reality has caught up with him when he wakes.

"That seems like a question the future can answer," Hannibal suggests. Will shakes his head. Hannibal doesn't press him.

The future can stay far away for now, the threats it might bring safely held distant. Will settles down on the blanket, and quickly becomes oblivious to the hard ground below and everything but Hannibal's warm body next to his own.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Big update today, and ONE more next week with the last two chapters and the epilogue. I can't believe it's almost done. :) I wanted to have it up before November, so that I can do Nanowrimo without making anyone wait. Thanks for reading along guys!


	35. snær

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They take a different route back than the one they had come by, Hannibal following the coast to keep them off of the vias. It grows colder each shortening winter day. It would be miserable, except they have no need to rush. Hannibal presses them on, but they don't starve themselves for speed, and when the snow is the worst they weather it in pairs in their tents.

They take a different route back than the one they had come by, Hannibal following the coast to keep them off of the vias. It grows colder each shortening winter day. It would be miserable, except they have no need to rush. Hannibal presses them on, but they don't starve themselves for speed, and when the snow is the worst they weather it in pairs in their tents. Will doesn't ask about the arrangement that develops between Antonius and Bávǫrr. It doesn't concern him,and it serves the practical use of keeping anyone from freezing to death.

If he occasionally catches Laura emerging from Bávǫrr's tent in the morning instead, it only makes Will smile.

For a long time, Hannibal is quiet and withdrawn. Will doesn't press him. He doesn't know the breadth and width of what Hannibal has been through, but his own experience leaves him leery as well.

What is waiting for him, the next time he looks into the future.

When the snows start to fall in heavy sheets, leaving their horses wading through knee high drifts, Will realizes they must have at last left the Imperium behind.

Hannibal has guided them safely out again, and if there was any pursuit made after the consul's death was discovered, they have never seen sign of it.

"We'll be snowed out of Ró," Hannibal says, echoing Will's fears as they ride, huddled together against the cold. Will thinks they are moving through the open plains of Surdia, but it's hard to tell.

"What do you want to do?" Will asks. He huddles beneath the blanket as the wind comes up sharp and cold, and thinks longingly of the fire pit in the dry longhouse. _Home._

"We'll have to ingratiate ourselves with Britta's clan and wait until the spring," Hannibal says. "And hope we won't have to fight our way back in."

'You think Fredrik will have taken over?" Will asks. 

"I don't need your Sight to guess what Freda will have encouraged him to do," Hannibal says.

Will chuckles and it ends in a shiver. It feels good to be getting closer to home, even if their actual return seems distant still. A sudden thought strikes him.

They will be staying with Britta - and Will has something he needs to tell Hannibal. Perhaps not while the rest of their party can overhear them. Will still isn't sure after all this time how Hannibal will react. Certainly, there's no going back now. He'll notice Margrit's condition right away - and Will feels that almost as a physical blow.

Winter is nearing an end. They had gone to seek aid from Britta's tribe at the height of summer. nearly half a year has passed. She will show.

Will thinks of the girl he'd seen in his vision and can't help his smile. Whatever Hannibal's initial reaction, Will is sure she'll earn his affection.

"There's something I should tell you," Will reminds Hannibal. He nods.

"We'll stop soon," Hannibal says. "The weather will make it dark earlier than usual."

"And cold," Will complains.

"At least this time we all have shoes." Hannibal says, adding a sly smile.

Will's laugh emerges in a cloud of steam and the cold touches all the way to his throat.

They make camp for the evening in an outcropping of pine trees, where the snow on the ground is thinner than out in the open. Will's fingers are numb by the time they've dug out spots for the tents and fire, and it is a miserable, smokey dinner as what wet branches they can find are coaxed to burn. 

It is too cold to remain out of their tents for long. Will bids his companions an early good night and climbs into the shelter of the tent, pulling off his gloves at last to try and chafe warmth back into his fingers.

Hannibal joins him quickly and closes his hands over Will's, sharing warmth. The two lost fingers have healed over,and Will catches Hannibal rubbing the scars sometimes, lost in his own thoughts.

"What was it that you had to tell me?" Hannibal asks. The space in the tent is very small and confined, and Will leans into Hannibal. 

"I made an agreement with Britta and Margrit for their services in healing you," Will says.

Hannibal is quiet, his arms strong around Will's middle as he confesses to the darkness. At least this has no eyes or mouths and does not seem to judge him.

"She asked for one thing," Will continues. "A life for a life."

Hannibal is quiet for a long moment, then his left hand makes a gentle sweep against Will's belly. "An heir."

"A Seer," Will agrees, "and a bid they can make for leadership."

Will takes a deep breath and sighs it out, hot against the back of Will's neck. It's finally getting warmer between them, shared heat slowly raising the temperature of the air trapped in the tent.

"For _them_ ," Hannibal clarifies, sounding amused. "Your methods of elevating me to power are very confusing."

"You can't be king if you're not alive," Will tells him, feeling the reassuring rise and fall of Hannibal's breath against his back. 

"No," Hannibal says. "I suppose I can't."

"If you ally with them, " Will says. "Your claim and their claim can be the same."

"That will make your son king and not me," Hannibal says. There's no malice or anger in it.

"Daughter," Will says. "I saw a girl in the future. She's wonderful."

Hannibal presses the back of his mouth to Will's neck in a very gentle kiss. "I know she will be."

For a time, there's quiet. Will hadn't expected it to go over this well, or at least for Hannibal to judge his decision harshly. Perhaps too much has changed in the interim.

Perhaps Hannibal's gift is whispering reassurances of this course.

"Hannibal?" Will asks, wondering if the gods that guide him are anything like the black devourer _Potential_. "What will you do if the fate you're guided to by the gods isn't the one you've chosen?"

"I suppose," Hannibal says, with his fingers tracing shapes over Will's belly, low and intimate. "I'll have to _satisfy_ myself with what I _have_ been guided to."

His fingers dip below the waistline of Will's pants, sliding his nails gently against sensitive skin, twining through the short curly hair over his cock.

Will stretches back, pulling the blankets higher over them, reaching back to encourage Hannibal with a hand curled against his neck, fingers tangled through the strands of hair escaping from his braid.

It's quiet except for their breaths, cold except for all the places they're touching, but Will's body eagerly answers the electric touch, though he's tired and sore and dirty from so much reading.

They can't undress all the way, even though Will thinks longingly of that intimacy when Hannibal's fist curls around his cock and gives slow, luxurious tugs until Will can barely keep himself quiet. He reaches out and gets ahold of the blankets, holding on to keep himself grounded.

He can feel release winding in him as Hannibal strokes him slowly, steadily toward the edge. For long moments he loses track of anything but the coiling feeling in his shoulders, the way he strains and bucks toward it as if he were a much younger man.

Will gasps when it breaks over him, feeling at the same moment the intense relief of such floating bliss and some strange certainty that it has been entirely too long, that this wasn't enough to satisfy him and express his relief at survival, at triumph and celebration that they were both alive, together, and free.

"Be careful," Hannibal warns when Will fights off the blissful daze of afterglow to push Hannibal down flat. Will's head brushes the top of the tent as he swings one leg over Hannibal's hips.

"I've had enough of careful," Will says, and the blankets slide off his shoulders and bare him to the cool air. Will places both his hands on Hannibal's chest and leans down over him, and he thinks he can see Hannibal's smile answering his own in the dark.

"We Ardik are wolves," Will reminds him, as Hannibal twists out of his pants. "Our care is a ferocious thing."

They prove it to each other, then, that they are alive and wild enough to stay free - first hard and fierce, though Will knows he'll regret it in the morning; then long and slow. They press foreheads together, devouring the soft murmurs they make against each other's mouths.

Will finds release a second time with sweat on the small of his back and Hannibal's unbalanced and scarred hands settled at Will's hips. Hannibal breathes Will's name with wonder against the soft spot at the center of Will's collarbone.

When it's over, it's still cold, they're still far from home, but sleep comes easy and heavy to them and holds them as close as they hold each other.

-


	36. verða

Britta is waiting for them, seated proudly on her tall horse in the snow. They are an immovable picture, dark against the white and only becoming clear as they get closer. She looks directly at them as they approach, one lone leader against an entire warband.

A solemn and stolid figure amidst the swirling snow.

"When my scouts said you were returning, I didn't believe them," she calls out, her voice cutting through the storm silence. The wind rises and tosses her brilliant blonde locks, trying to rip her next words away, but Will hears them.

"I should have known your Seer would not fail."

They close the distance slowly, tentatively. Britta does not warn them off or turn them away.

"Welcome home, Bávǫrr," she says. 

"They're going to need a place to stay," Bávǫrr answers, pulling up nose to tail along-side Britta's horse. "Seems their village is so well protected even they cannot reach it until the thaw."

Britta gives Hannibal a glance that is somewhere between imperious pleasure and amusement. She enjoys having them at her mercy, for however short a time.

"A virtue for which we are extremely grateful," Britta allows, her tone twisting with a warm amusement around the words.

Will supposes she can still feel warm and comfortable enough for sarcasm and double meanings. Will endures these 'negotiations' with as much patience as he can find and his fingers tucked beneath the opposite arms, as warm as possible. His gloves and the blanket he rides in have done a lot - kept him from freezing solid. Time and exposure cannot be staved off forever.

"Come along Lagbrotna, we will harbor you from the storm," Britta turns her horse and sends Bávǫrr ahead to make arrangements.

"We are again in your debt, Lady Britta," Hannibal says, with grace.

"I'll keep track," she says, with a haughty toss of her hair. 

Hannibal has no answer. He is as tired as the rest of them, as exhausted and travel-worn and ready for shelter that isn't small and temporary.

It's not home, but they are too tired to care.

"What happened to your fingers?" Britta asks, with her gaze on the two empty fingers of Hannibal's glove.

"A consul and his son ate them," Hannibal says, simply. "It was all they could take."

Will has not heard this detail before, and it's delivered flippantly enough that Will studies Hannibal for signs that he's making it up for an impression. Will sees no indication of a lie.

The news strikes a hollow place in Will's middle and then sinks without much of a ripple. it is the past, it hadn't mattered and the horror of the action is small and distant. Hannibal is alive. He'd broken fate. Later, Will can press his mouth to the injury and be thankful for the small price they paid.

"Well you've been lucky to make your losses small this year," Britta says.

They pass a pair of guards at the outside of the encampment, and Will recognizes one as Alannah. She gives Will a sad smile he can't quite read into. He tips his head politely, so he doesn't have to expose his hand to greet her.

Britta navigates between the tents and then pauses, pulling her horse up in front of one of the octagonal yurts, made of hide like all the others and painted. It has a motif of a standing crane, the totem of a previous resident. 

"This can be yours. Inside, you may put up dividers however you like," she says. "Quarters will be close, but Spring is not so far off yet."

They know better than to be ungrateful, and there will at least be one less body to share the space. Bávǫrr returns to her own home, as if glad to be rid of them. 

Will doubts his own return home will be any less pragmatic.

_Spring is not so far off, yet._

Britta leaves them to settle in. Will turns the horses loose in the paddock and for a time they hover together uncertainly. They have forgotten any routine but that of travel. Will watches them until they seek shelter with the rest of the herd., easing in together under the overhang that will spare them the worst of the snow. 

By the time he's finished carrying his saddle back to the tent, they have nearly finished hanging dividers inside, separating three sleeping areas away from the central fire pit, located beneath the open peak of of the well-supported canvas roof. The fire pit is sunk down below the hard wooden planks of the floor and lined with stones. 

Will digs out cold, wet ashes with his hands, sniffling, determined that a fire is his first order of business. He doesn't want to sleep tasting cold air again tonight.

Rinault wordlessly gathers armloads of wood from the covered pile along one side of the tent, dry and ready to burn. Will sees him stretch and flex his right arm afterward, holding where his old injury is still healing. 

Will carries a bucket full of old sodden ashes out and upends them into the snow, his mind as blank as the drifts before he stains them dark. He will have to clean and oil his saddle - the one that has carried him to Imperium and back.

The smell of woodsmoke reaches him as he looks across the plains. The tall grass has vanished under the snow. Will feels like his world has transformed in some similar fashion, subsumed and become unrecognizable under the thickness of passing time. His eyes will adjust to the changes. 

"You're a fright," a voice intrudes on Will's drifting thoughts, pulling him back from his exhausted daydream.

"I could sleep for days," Will admits. "We've all had our fill of traveling."

"Do you ever take off that cloak now?" Alannah asks. She stands beside him, mindful of the puddle of ashes darkening the snow.

"I was thinking I'd paint wolves on the tent," he says, "when the paint won't freeze."

"We should talk," she says.

"How's Margrit?" Will asks.

A long silence answers and Will knows without needing his Sight that Alannah has come to talk about her. Will hears her take a breath, and he isn't sure what to expect.

"She's dealing with the loss," Alannah says. 

"The-?" Will asks, startled. The bucket handle slips from his fingers, and it crashes into the snow where the ashes had fallen. The sound is fragile and delicate, consumed by the heavy snowdrift.

"She felt something was wrong some time ago," Alannah admits. "But we were certain two weeks ago. You didn't See?"

Inside Will, something crumples up. He had not realized it was there, had so much else to do that he couldn't have noticed the way expectation and desire had taken root in him and begun to grow. He finds his hands empty, but distinctly remembers the curl of small fingers, Seen and then changed, around his own.

"It would have been a girl," he says.

Alannah doesn't look at him. She nods. After a moment, she says. "Margrit's not ready to see you - or anyone. I thought I would warn you."

Will thanks her with numb words. He cannot think of anything else to do. When he turns back into the tent, his eyes are so snow-dazzled that for an instant the interior is only pitch black shadow; an open maw waiting for him. 

A vision looms up before his eyes, the ghostly outline of the empty cross and the echoes of his own choice, the sacrifice he thought he was making now coming around again. Revealed, in this sudden devastation, the one Will _actually_ made. At the moment, it seems intolerable. Even the warmth of the fire cannot touch him, and he bolts for the small solitude of the first partition.

"Will?" Antonius' voice. It turns Will like a bit lodged in his teeth, wheels him around to face Antonius, his gaze settling on the new scars above his hairline. A bright coil of anger snaps up in him, winding. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Will yanks the curtain closed behind him. It is not Antonius' fault. The gods are cruel. Will's return from being Lost demanded a choice of sacrifice. _His_ mistake in reaching too far, diving too deep for the future.

He thought his choice had been to give himself back, when his purpose had been accomplished. Now he can see that was never an option. Will was expected to choose, and then live with the results of his decision. The agony was his price for Hannibal, for his life, for the return to home.

Will sinks down on the soft rugs in the dark space and feels Potential's terrible claws in his skin.

In his vision of the future, his nameless daughter had asked Will to See what her own future would bring. Would he have Seen nothing, if he had tried? Would he have seen this moment, a future erased in the past?

The curtain shifts aside, admits Hannibal, and falls back into place. A warm body settles behind Will. Hannibal's arms come up around his middle.

"Everything's changed," Will says. His eyes are wet, his face hot. Throat tight. He has to fight to get the words free.

"What do you See now?" Hannibal asks, voice warm and gentle against Will's neck. His arms are solid and tight around Will, anchoring him. 

"Be quiet," Will says, reaching down into the hot, threatening tranquility at the center of his mind. "And let me See it."

[END.]


	37. Epilogue

The colt is bigger than Hannibal now, long legged and beginning to shed the squarishness of a colt's body for the strong, round swells of a stallion. He is dark, like his father, with a broad white blaze and four white feet. Handsome.

He hasn't forgotten Hannibal, either. He parts from the herd with his head up, ears forward at Hannibal's whistle. The spring thaw means the pass is clear, the herd of horses are free to graze in the valley, and Will and Hannibal have come home.

Hannibal pats the animal, gentle, and finds he has begun to grow austere and serious, no longer overcome with the bouts of coltish silliness that drew Hannibal's eye. He pats the stout neck, passing a dried apple from a pouch at his belt, and turns to the cave entrance that leads up to the plateau.

Beside him is Will, painted face, wolf cape worn low. He has changed in these months, too. The Sight torments him, and his anger runs deep. He has become the Ardik wolf in his mind, fierce and feral, protective of what's his.

"Are you ready to go in with the ghosts?" Hannibal asks him.

"We should go through the front," Will says.

"This won't give Fredrik a chance to think about defending what he might think is his," Hannibal says.

Beneath the grimacing wolf hood, Will shows his teeth. 

Hannibal does not know how to sooth this drive and anger in Will, feels no pull that would lead them to comfort. Will is transforming, and Hannibal can only watch, wait. Whisper to him and see what may emerge.

He reaches up and gently pushes the hood back, smooths his thumb over Will's mouth until the snarl softens. He kisses Will, then. Not softly, but with the gentleness allowed between members of the pack.

"Wolves are not solitary animals," Hannibal reminds. "These are our people, this is our home. Better to go in like we remember that and they will too, soon enough."

Will hisses his breath out into the warming spring air, a slow controlled release of anger.

Together they step into the ghost-filled dark.

-

**Author's Note:**

> -Where 'Lagbrotna' meant Fatebreaker, roughly, Lagleita means 'to manufacture fate', but here I would translate it more to 'Fatemaker', if you'll forgive me for doing so.  
> -Matteus, being an early form of Matthew - herein, Matthew Brown, a former Imperial soldier now held as a slave after the defeat of the Imperium's invading army.  
> -Randulf, similarly is a familiar face - Randall Tier.  
> -In this, as before, the Imperium is roughly equivalent to expansionist Rome. Helenites also are mentioned - they're equivalent to the Greeks of city-states around that era, much more loosely associated as a whole than Rome. Harmanic is the equivalent of the Germanic tribes, now mostly brought to heel under Imperium occupation, and Ardik (Northern) and Surdik (Southern) 'barbarian' tribes - in this, an interesting mash up of Viking culture and Mongol culture. They should be considered Horse Vikings, in that they mostly conduct their raids overland.  
> -This work was vastly encouraged and inspired by [Quedarius](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Quedarius/pseuds/Quedarius), who also beta reads the chapters for me. You should bring her many mules as gifts. :)  
> -This posts 2 chapters every other sunday, which is as much as I can manage and keep my other projects going. I was asked to provide more substantial updates for this particular fic at a time, which involves a trade-off for more frequent updates. Be patient!


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